Am I a Leader?

Not everyone has what it takes to be a good leader. Leadership is not a quality that we are all born with. Some people can lead while others prefer to follow. However, quite often people who may think they don’t have what it takes to be a leader are actually wrong. Leadership isn’t about being right or smart. Just because somebody is successful or makes smart money decisions, doesn’t mean they are necessarily a good leader. Leadership is about recognising personal weaknesses while identifying strengths in others. The key to becoming a successful leader is identifying these leadership traits and being able to bring them out and utilise them. But to identify them, you need to ask yourself some key questions first:

Are you a people person?

Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi one of the world’s greatest leaders, said: “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.” Ghandi recognised that good leadership is about people. The task of leading a team involves many facets. This may include having an open door to listen to people’s problems, being sympathetic and understanding, and recognising when people’s faults are getting the better of them. Poor leaders all too often hide themselves away, remain aloof or can’t handle the variety of problems that people management involves. Empathy is a facet all leaders need to possess. Leaders should be honest too. Withholding information from a team, especially if it concerns them, is a sure fire way to lose trust. If bad news is on the horizon, keeping people informed of it will retain their confidence, rather than have them feel that you’ve let them down.

Can you show by example?

It may be a cliché, but all good leaders need to lead by example. In business, it’s all too common for managers to expect others to do all the work, but people are not encouraged by this approach. The kings of old knew this. They would lead their armies into battle from the front, instilling a passion and dedication from their followers. The same is true in business. Rolling your sleeves up when necessary and getting stuck in will inspire others. Being seen as one of the team rather than just the boss creates loyalty and dedication. All too often, large businesses develop a them-and-us culture between management and the workforce. This is largely due to a lack of leading by example.

Are you passionate about what you are doing?

Having faith and confidence in what you are trying to achieve is essential for leadership. If you don’t have any enthusiasm for the task in hand, it’s hardly likely people are going to be inspired by you. When people see you working late, dedicating your time and showing passion in the importance of what you are trying to achieve, it will infect others. If you don’t believe in what you are doing, then it’s highly likely you are in the wrong job and certainly shouldn’t be leading others.

Can you communicate?

Communication is two-way. All too often, managers delegate and give instructions while failing to listen to other people’s views. As mentioned, being a leader doesn’t mean you are going to be right all the time. The experience and skills of the people working in the team are a leader’s most valuable assets. A good leader recognises this and uses them. Good communication also means making firm decisions and relaying instructions clearly and concisely. Indecision will not inspire confidence in a leader, while dressing up instructions in convoluted business speak may mean information get lost in translations. Good leaders need to be decisive and clear in their requirements.

Can you trust others?

Delegation is as essential aspect for any leader. You can’t do it all. Not having faith in the people you delegate tasks too is also a sign of a weak leader. A leader needs to show confidence in his or her workforce. When people make mistakes, as inevitably happens, this may mean taking responsibility for them, rather than blaming whomever the task was delegated to. People need to know they have their manager’s trust. If not, they will be reluctant to volunteer or take control of projects.

Are you organised?

Good planning and organisation are effective skills for any leader. Chaos and disorganisation will soon infect the team as a whole. A good leader instils confidence by appearing confident. If you are organised and know what you’re doing, then it is more likely the team will too.

For the information of our readers, Jack Lundee is our recommended Guest Author for this month.

Jack Lundee of Everything Left, supporter of all things green and progressive.

Without a vision, Martin Luther King would have never been a prophetic and influential leader in the civil rights movement. The same principle can be applied to individuals in the modern day business world.

Before any real corporate establishment or individual can progress forward, they must have a vision, along with a prepared list of written goals and objectives. It’s true that a mere 5% of the American population has a list of written objectives. And sadly enough, the business world is much different.

And these “lists” or goals should be updated consistently. For most business owners and entrepreneurs, this means quarterly, bi-annually or annually. Nonetheless, a prepared set of objectives is ultimately what helps us indentify constraints, set standards, and track progress. Likewise, it’ s a constant reminder and motivator for what we have to do and how we have to do it.

Visions are the driving force in any work environment, and eventually they help us outline goals and give clear direction as to where we want to be in 1, 5 or even 10 years. American poet Henry David Thoreau once talked about dreams and visions in his famous quote “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” As individuals, we can take company goals to the next level by pursuing our own dreams of wealth and success. This translated to establishing a relationship between where you stand now and where you want to go. If you’re satisfied with your work environment, but wish to see change in certain areas, perhaps it would be wise to assert yourself in the areas which you deem weak, whether you’re the cause of weakness or not.

To accompany this, it may be wise to practice things that typical leaders do. This would involve things like writing down daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly goals for yourself at the organization that you’re in. Having your goals in ink allows you to clarify your thought process. Likewise, it helps prepare and process obstacles, objectives, constraints and previous standards, all of which are essential variables in goal setting. Ultimately, writing down your goals will create self-inspiration, which vital to leadership and success.

Self-inspiration will eventually lead to confidence. Having the confidence to challenge the system by providing sound and reputable theory or evidence can better any establishment. But a leader must be more than confident; they must possess the knowledge and capacity to influence through their written agendas. If you’re prominent investment manager Daniel Zwirn and you’re looking to increase revenues by the end of the year, you may want to revert back to previous years to see exactly where you stood. And I use Zwirn as an example because he’s been through a great deal of adversity, which is also another great component of a leader. To fully understand what it means to be at the bottom, you’re definitely more capable and determined to be at the top.

Yet, all the personality traits and characteristics are direct or indirect result of personalized business goals. You’re bound to be successful if you constantly track and monitor your objectives. Be wary of things like time, money and seasonal constraints, but don’t ever lose sight of what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. Once you’ve hit the point to where no question can go unanswered, you’ve already become your own coach. Use your abilities to motivate, influence and inspire and make sure that when somebody asks you how you got to that point, show them your goal sheet.

More about Jack Lundee:

email: j.lundee@gmail.com

sites: http://everythingleft.wordpress.com and http://shadesofgreen.info

twitter: http://www.twitter.com/j_lundee

I came across this on the website of David Icke.

It was a voice-over at the beginning of the video which I have transcribed here.

As a life and business coach,and someone who devotes his life to training others to be coaches, I really couldn’t have said this better myself.

we could do a lot worse than take this as a set of guidelines to live by.

I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible. Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each others’ misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another.

In this world, there’s room for everyone, and the good Earth is rich, and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost.

The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Ideas in Action :
The following was taken from an article written by Uday Arur
Barriers to Success – Strategy or Execution?

Recent studies have shown that organizations that have gone through the effort of developing a written strategy fail miserably at execution. According to Paul Niven in his book “The Balanced Scorecard”:

Only 10% of organizations execute their strategy

Only 25% of managers and executives have incentives linked to strategy

85% of executive teams spend less than 1 hour per month on strategy

60% of organizations don’t link budgets to strategy

Who will our customers be? How many will we have?

Those are pretty dismal facts about commitment and results as they pertain to strategy execution.

However, Roger Martin (The Execution Trap, HBR July-August 2010), believes that the idea that a strategy can be brilliant and execution poor is flawed.

To Martin, the flaw stems from the common metaphor used to illustrate the opposing views regarding strategy execution – the one where the organizations “thinkers” come up with the strategy and doers “execute”.

Instead, Martin proposes an alternative metaphor, which he believes can correct the flaw in the thinking. He compares the organization with a white-water river, where choices cascade down from upstream to downstream in the organizational hierarchy. This approach would enable more freedom to adapt decisions to the specifics of the environment in which each organizational level operates, all within a larger framework and direction given by the strategy (the river). Unlike the strategy-execution approach, in which leaders dictate and set strategies and expect subordinates to mechanically follow, the choice-cascade model has senior managers empower workers by allowing them to use their best judgement in the scenarios they encounter. But, says Martin, to effectively enable those individual choices, a choice maker “upstream” must set the context for the downstream.

Martin suggests four ways the choice maker can help his employees make better choices:

Explain the choice that has been made and the rationale for it

Explicitly identify the next downstream choice

Assist in making the downstream choice as needed

Commit to revisiting and modifying the choice based on downstream feedback

Because downstream choices are valued and feedback is encouraged, the framework enables employees to send information back upstream, improving the knowledge base of decision makers higher up and enabling everyone in the organization to make better choices. And when workers are made to feel empowered, the whole organization wins!

The first metaphor, which treats strategy separate from execution, can be associated with a mechanistic, command and control thinking, whereas, what Martin seems to suggest is an organic, systems thinking with an interrelated, integrated view of strategy.

Which side are you on?
Uday Arur CMC, CEQM, CBA
Business Coach
www.arurbizcoach.com

I was trying to think of something to say about the power of our thoughts and then remembered this.
It says it so well.

When you focus upon lack in an attitude of complaining, you establish a vibrational point of attraction that then gives you access only to more thoughts of complaint. Your deliberate effort to tell a new story will establish a new pattern of thought, providing you with a new point of attraction from your present, about your past, and into your future. The simple effort of looking for positive aspects will set a new vibrational tone that will begin the immediate attraction of thoughts, people, circumstances, and things that are pleasing to you.
— Abraham

I lost my beautiful new iPhone yesterday I had only had it for four weeks and had already fallen in love with it.
Yesterday I very stupidly left it in a taxi in Bucharest,and did not realise until the taxi had sped off.
Which then of course accounted for the time spent at the local police station. I have to say, actually they were incredibly good, ever so professional, friendly and caring. I was most impressed.

It’s very interesting for the first few minutes after losing the phone and after the taxi disappeared over the horizon !!! I felt a combination of anger and loss.
However I quickly reframed that ( thank goodness I know these coaching techniques) and actually now I am feeling a huge sense of relief.
Not only can I not telephone anyone ( which is a little bit frustrating) but more importantly no one can call me
And I realized that actually, in the back of your mind all the time when you are carrying your phone you are always aware that it can go off at any time and suddenly you are at people’s beck and call, involved in problems, or having to deal with some situation.
For me, today that has been completely removed, and I have to say, it feels great.
So, although I will probably have to claim on my insurance and set about getting a new phone, I fully intend to enjoy the short time without one. It really is a tremendous relief.

Back at home at last.

WOW what an adventure trip. I arrived back on Sunday night having spent the last 16 days travelling around Eastern Europe on my motorbike.

Went through the following countries

However it has made me realise that one trip isn’t enough I now need to plan for more

Here are our bikes parked outside our Frankfurt hotel at the end of our first long day of riding . Mine is the white Honda on the right-hand side (the mighty Honda !!)

I will upload some photographs and journey details in my next post

Warmest