How To Develop Your Own Potential Quickly
www.leadershipmadesimple.com Part 1 of the first of a number of free short learning videos for management leadership development. Watch and sign up to get the rest of the management leadership series. From the co-author of Enlightened Leadership and Leadership Made Simple and founder of Enlightened Leadership Solutions, which has been making managers into leaders for 21 years.
As an executive coach, I have found that style really does matter. Leadership style, that is.
Many people go through life with an attitude that says, “This is the way I am – take it or leave it.” As a leader, you don’t have that option. When confronted with diverse situations in the work environment, you will often need to respond with very different leadership styles. Some will be comfortable and natural to you, and some will make you stretch.
Take the situation one of my clients found himself in:
My client was CEO of a mid-size corporation. His natural flair was to work with his staff in a very collaborative fashion. In fact, he believed that it was important not only to collaborate with his staff, but to have consensus from them on all major decisions. In most cases, this worked well. But the day came when the company needed to implement a new operational structure. A massive change was essential. The CEO attempted to collaborate and get a consensus from all the members on his leadership team … but three months later, they were still arguing about what to do and how to do it. Friction and hostility had crept into the previously united team. The CEO was at his wit’s end. He called me in.
The problem? His leadership team was not ready to assume the responsibilities he was placing on them. They didn’t have the experience and skills that were necessary to collaborate effectively and implement a solid plan of action.
The solution? The CEO had to change his leadership style from collaborative to decisive. He himself had to define what the new operational structure of the business was going to look like, and drive the change forward. Within one month of his asserting this higher level of control, the new structure was in place and functioning smoothly, and the transition had been completely seamless to the company’s customers.
Will he always have to stay in this decisive role? By no means. As his leadership team continues to grow and develop, the collaborative approach that is natural to him will become more and more appropriate and effective. But he has learned a valuable lesson – and one that he will benefit from again and again: Great leadership isn’t a matter of finding a “perfect style” and sticking to it through thick and thin. It’s about knowing the perfect style for the situation you’re currently in and using it well.
© 2008 Timothy I. Thomas
You have my permission to reprint and distribute this article as long as it is distributed in its entirety, including all links and copyright information. This article is not to be sold or included with anything that is sold.
Timothy I. Thomas is the President and CEO of Makarios Consulting, LLC, a leadership development and business consulting firm. Makarios Consulting specializes in interactive training and one-on-one coaching in progressive organizations in order to equip and empower their leaders to maximize their own leadership skills and inspire others to accomplish extraordinary business results. Timothy Thomas is the author of Creating All-Star Performers: The Power of Effective Feedback, now available for immediate download at www.MakariosConsulting.com.
Do you want to change your leadership style? Perhaps you’ve discovered something in particular that you want to do, or do differently.
And this, of course, is the problem. You want to change something you do, but the folks in the office just aren’t expecting you to change anything. They don’t WANT you to change anything.
Also, some people around you may be suspicious or cynical. Not all of them, maybe, but enough to make it tricky to change.
So no matter how enthusiastic or motivated you might be to make a change, all of the ‘noise’ around you makes you reluctant, or resistant, to change. The pain of change seems worse than the gain of change.
So you stop even thinking about change. And soon you’re as cynical and suspicious as all the rest. And nothing ever changes.
If this sluggish feeling is familiar to you, then what you’re experiencing is the heavy inertia of ‘the way things work round here’. It’s the power of the status quo to weigh heavy on you and stop you from changing anything.
How can you start the change process? What you urgently need to do is find ways over or round the inertia. And the questions to ask are these:
1. When is it easier to change my leadership style?
2. What will help me to change my leadership style?
First, it’s easier to change your leadership style when you take a new job or a new role in another department. In a new role, you can set out your plans for the new team and you can change the way you manage or lead the team. This is, of course, because no one knows you from your previous role. They don’t know the old boss.
You can also change your leadership style at the start of every new project. Every beginning is an opportunity to restart or relaunch your leadership style.
Of course, you may still have tricky issues to deal with – people asking ‘why the sudden change?’ – so there is something else you need to do: create a Leadership Manifesto to overcome inertia
A Leadership Manifesto will make it easier for you to change your leadership style.
The Manifesto – like a manifesto for a political party – is an outline sketch of what you’re trying to do. And, importantly, it’s also a sketch of HOW you’re planning to do it.
Drafting and actually discussing a one-page leadership manifesto with your team is a great way of getting people moving anyway, and the idea of a manifesto helps people focus round what you’re trying to achieve.
Now your manifesto could address any of the issues you feel are important for the team to address. Here are just three suggestions:
1. Collaborative goal setting versus boss-centred goal setting. You may want to work with people to help them set goals or you may wish to give people targets based on your understanding of their skills and performance in the past.
2. Cross-business collaboration versus cross-business competition. You may want to explore why you believe you should be collaborating with other teams in the business or why you should be competing internally with them.
3. Day-to-day constructive feedback versus end-of-year appraisals. You may wish to create a more open atmosphere and attitude towards ‘live’ performance management. You might want to create an atmosphere where it is acceptable to give practical and constructive feedback. The alternative is waiting for the end-of-year appraisal which is way too late to be useful.
I find that the concept of a leadership manifesto is very flexible and you can use it anyway that suits you. For example, you could with your team develop a change manifesto. Get the team to create their own manifesto for the way things work round here. Invite them to think about, if they were in charge, what would they change?
And finally, make sure that part of your Leadership Manifesto is about making it easy for others to make changes in their role. Give your team permission to change, too. That’s part of your developmental role, which should also be in the Manifesto.
Having an open and understood Leadership Manifesto is all part of building your personal leadership brand. Your openness on what people can expect from you helps them to trust you more, so that when the going gets tough, they know they can rely on you to lead them well.
If you want the leadership success you deserve, get the leadership training you deserve. Download more free articles and leadership training videos from Steven Sonsino, an international business school professor and author of the Amazon bestseller “The Seven Failings of Really Useless Leaders”
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Do you desire to know if you must wear ladies wide fitting shoes? Many ladies do not know if wide shoes are essential. In this article I am going to give you 3 reasons you ought to wear shoes that are the correct size.
If you are like me then at first you may not have wanted to acknowledge that you had wide feet. I had never liked to go shoe shopping with my friends that had small size 4 narrow feet, I would whisper that I needed a size 9 wide or I would try to smash my foot into a shoe it had no business being in. This was not a good idea.
Reason #1 – Hammertoes
Have you ever seen a person sporting flip flops and their toes were curled around to the side or they seemed to curl under? This is commonly identified as the hammertoe. You can develop this by either sporting shoes that are too tiny or too narrow for you.
Reason #2 – Bad Circulation
By wearing shoes that are in fact too narrow for you can cause yourself to have bad circulation. If you know something at all about reflexology then you of course know that your feet are linked to all parts of your body. You will be healthier if you are nice to your feet.
Reason #3 – Corns
There are several ladies that have gotten corns on the side of their feet from wearing too narrow of a shoe. It regularly shows up on your petite toe and it is not at all attractive.
Make sure that you are kindly to your feet. You only accomplish one pair and if you do not take care of those you may find yourself seated for longer than you would love.
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For people who seem to have it all or for the people who are bored with their lifestyle, there are several things that they can do to spruce-up their lives. Perhaps one of the best ways though is to start redecorating one’s home. Two of the first places you should consider redecorating are your bathroom and kitchen.
These are usually the most overlooked and most used rooms in the entire house. Think about it, have you redecorated at least even one of these rooms within the past five years? The answer is probably going to be no. In which case think back to the last time you even looked closely at your bathroom or kitchen other than to clean them.
Probably, if you noticed anything at all, you put the idea off until a future date when you would be able to devote more time to refurbishing your bathroom or kitchen, although at that time, the place certainly didn’t look as bad as it does now, after all, the years soon mount up and even though you’ve been keeping it rigorously clean you can’t prevent the steady march of time.
It is probably true that if you were to take a closer look now, you’d find that the drapes are looking a bit shabby and ragged around the edges, as are the bathroom mats. And do not even talk about the soap dish. It is quite true that they don’t make them like they used to, and with very good cause too!
So, do yourself a favour and throw out all that unnecessary junk in the bathroom and get yourself some new accessories – you will be surprised at what lovely things you can find nowadays. Besides, you’ve probably been eyeing that lovely bathroom set you saw in the shop for some time, so at the very least now you will have a good reason to go out and splash out on yourself.
And while you’re at it, don’t forget to buy that nice new spice rack you saw for the kitchen and a few rugs that can be used in either room. Ideally, they should be resilient to such commonplace occurrences like water spillage, soap, oil grease, fat and all the other things that somehow seem to become ground into your carpets.
However, if you’re looking for a few new ideas about decorating your bathroom or your kitchen, there are a number of resources where you can get your inspiration from. The best I’ve found are the catalogues you can peruse to your heart’s content.
With all these options, you could even substitute something that is less expensive for the items that you see in the catalogues. This then, is the best way to get your decorating projects started and to keep yourself busy for some time to come and to make your long suffering bathroom and kitchen areas spotlessly new and glitzy.
If you are looking for stylish ideas on stylish home decor, then you must go along to our website for more free ideas on bathroom and kitchen remodeling and more. This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.
