You Can be Great If You Really Want To

A brief, interesting clip from National Geographic’s “Ape Genius” documentary, demonstrating problem solving skills in chimpanzees, by using water as a flotation aid to retrieve a treat from a narrow tube. This experiment was conducted at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.

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Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves fail to recognize and realize in the course of reading books. Here is a short list of things you thought you knew about leadership.

1. Leaders come in different flavors.

There are different types of leaders and you will probably encounter more than one type in your lifetime. Formal leaders are those we elect into positions or offices such as the senators, congressmen, and presidents of the local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up to by virtue of their wisdom and experience such as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents; or by virtue of their expertise and contribution on a given field such as Albert Einstein in the field of Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of the Arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles.

*  Lewinís three basic leadership styles ñ authoritative, participative, and delegative
*  Likertís four leadership styles ñ exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative, and participative
*  Golemanís six emotional leadership styles – visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding.   

2. Leadership is a process of becoming.

Although certain people seem to be born with innate leadership qualities, without the right environment and exposure, they may fail to develop their full potential. So like learning how to ride a bicycle, you can also learn how to become a leader and hone your leadership abilities. Knowledge on leadership theories and skills may be formally gained by enrolling in leadership seminars, workshops, and conferences. Daily interactions with people provide the opportunity to observe and practice leadership theories. Together, formal and informal learning will help you gain leadership attitudes, gain leadership insights, and thus furthering the cycle of learning. You do not become a leader in one day and just stop. Life-long learning is important in becoming a good leader for each day brings new experiences that put your knowledge, skills, and attitude to a test.

3. Leadership starts with you.

The best way to develop leadership qualities is to apply it to your own life. As an adage goes ìaction speaks louder than words.î Leaders are always in the limelight. Keep in mind that your credibility as a leader depends much on your actions: your interaction with your family, friends, and co-workers; your way of managing your personal and organizational responsibilities; and even the way you talk with the newspaper vendor across the street. Repeated actions become habits. Habits in turn form a personís character. Steven Coveyís book entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides good insights on how you can achieve personal leadership.

4. Leadership is shared.

Leadership is not the sole responsibility of one person, but rather a shared responsibility among members of an emerging team. A leader belongs to a group. Each member has responsibilities to fulfill. Formal leadership positions are merely added responsibilities aside from their responsibilities as members of the team. Effective leadership requires members to do their share of work. Starting as a mere group of individuals, members and leaders work towards the formation of an effective team. In this light, social interaction plays a major role in leadership. To learn how to work together requires a great deal of trust between and among leaders and members of an emerging team. Trust is built upon actions and not merely on words. When mutual respect exists, trust is fostered and confidence is built.

5. Leadership styles depend on the situation.

How come dictatorship works for Singapore but not in the United States of America? Aside from culture, beliefs, value system, and form of government, the current situation of a nation also affects the leadership styles used by its formal leaders. There is no rule that only one style can be used. Most of the time, leaders employ a combination of leadership styles depending on the situation. In emergency situations such as periods of war and calamity, decision-making is a matter of life and death. Thus, a nationís leader cannot afford to consult with all departments to arrive at crucial decisions. The case is of course different in times of peace and order—different sectors and other branches of government can freely interact and participate in governance. Another case in point is in leading organizations. When the staffs are highly motivated and competent, a combination of high delegative and moderate participative styles of leadership is most appropriate. But if the staffs have low competence and low commitment, a combination of high coaching, high supporting, and high directing behavior from organizational leaders is required.

Now that you are reminded of these things, keep in mind that there are always ideas that we think we already know; concepts we take for granted, but are actually the most useful insights on leadership.

one of the key criteria of stress management is managing Thought Attacks™. A Thought Attack™ is what happens when your mind turns on itself and attacks any possibility of a positive outlook. It does this by focusing your thoughts on the negative and threatening aspects of a situation.

Once a Thought Attack™ enters your mind it starts to attract similar thoughts and begins to snowball. It gains further momentum until feelings of stress, anxiety and panic set in.

When you experience Thought Attacks™ you have given permission for negative thoughts to have free reign in your mind and consequently allowed feelings of stress to enter your body and our stress management ability declines.

Thought Attacks™ are the biggest disease known to mankind. They infect us all many times a day and affect us in ways we don’t even realise causing illness, poor health, low self-esteem and unhappiness. On a larger scale, they can result in intolerance, hatred and conflict.

So what happens when we experience a Thought Attack™?

This example will help explain how Thought Attacks™ sabotage stress management:

You decide to enter a 100km cycling race. You have completed a few of these races before but you’ve never reached your goal of finishing the race in under 4 hours. Everyday for months you wake up early to train. You’re committed and disciplined. You even lose a few kilograms and go to bed early so that you’ll be fresh for each morning’s training session.

The day finally arrives. The gun goes off and away you go. You’re feeling strong and positive. The race is going well until you suddenly hit a pot-hole and fall off your bicycle onto the road. Your skin is scraped and bruised but you can still continue the race. You check the damage to your bicycle and discover a tyre puncture. By the time you’ve cleaned up and repaired the tyre, 20 minutes have gone by and you realise that you’ll never finish the race within your goal time.

I’m sure you’ll agree this event has the potential to cause a little stress and derail the stress management process!

So how can you respond?

Response 1: Thought Attack™ Response (usual default thinking)

While you’re busy repairing your tyre thoughts start to churn inside your head. You think to yourself: I can’t believe this has happened! I’m such an idiot I should have seen the pot-hole. What a waste of all that training! Why don’t tyre companies make decent tyres that don’t puncture so easily? Why is life so unfair? Why did this happen to me?

When you choose responses like this you’re experiencing a Thought Attack™! So what can you do to overcome it and what’s the antidote that would make you feel more positive and become better at stress management.

Let’s look at what another response to this situation could look like.

Response 2: The Wise Owl Response (suggested stress management technique)

While you’re repairing your tyre you think: Thankfully I’m only slightly injured. I hit the pot-hole at 30km an hour and I could have been badly hurt. I can still finish the race but that’s not much of a challenge for me. What other goal can I set so that I can feel that I’ve achieved something?

You decide to reset a new time and challenge yourself to ride at an even faster pace. With this thought in mind you regain your feeling of excitement about the race and don’t allow the situation to sabotage your positive state of mind.

The Wise Owl Response is valuable in stress management because it helps you view life’s challenging situations in a way that benefits you rather than allowing them to create feelings of stress.