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.

Well, what an incredible few days it really has been. Yesterday especially!

Yesterday started at 7:30 AM with a trip to the television studios in Cluj, the main city in Transylvania in Romania..I have to say they looked after me incredibly well and were so professional and friendly. We were on air for about 15 minutes discussing exactly what coaching is and how it benefits people. It was broadcast nationally.

Then it was a mad dash taxi drive back to our hotel to prepare for our introduction to coaching event. We had a packed room, and the event was very well received. People travelled from many parts of Romania some over 400 miles way !!

When that finished at 5:15 PM it was then a case of reset the room and prepare for the

Noble Manhattan Coaching Support Group. The group in Cluj is run by Monica Ichimescu, our senior coach and group president in the area.

Monica Ichimescu

There were well over 35 people from all around the Cluj area and the main topic was spirituality in coaching, which of course I love 

Then, a short trip to the Toastmasters club where I was given a most wonderful reception, I gave a short talk on Communication Skills and Public Speaking.  what a fantastic group of people This had been organised by Irina Irimia, our coordinator in the Transylvania area, who has done an incredible job.

Irina Irimia

Then eventually a hot cup of mint tea and bed !! After a long and eventful day.

I wonder what today will bring ??

Gerard

Another use for our Company Brochure

Well, I flew back in yesterday from Romania to a winter wonderland Snow everywhere and white forests and trees as far as the eye could see. It did look absolutely beautiful.
Unfortunately when I arrived at my car, which had been parked in the airport car park for nine days, I was in for a little bit of a shock.
The first problem was finding the car, every car was simply covered in snow, in fact it was so thick and deep it was difficult to tell where one car finished and another car began.

Eventually I located my car ( thank goodness for remote unlocking !!- it was the beep that finally helped me to find it)
Then began the real adventure.
You know that snow sometimes can be light and fluffy and dry, and you can just blow on it and it will fly away.
Well, this wasn’t one of those times !!! The snow was rock hard, Icy and freezing.
I could barely get the door of my car open and after five minutes of futile effort trying to scrape it off with my hands, Which turned to blocks of ice. I finally hit on an idea.
In my case I had some of our Noble Manhattan company brochures.
What a wonderful tool. Because they are quite firm and hard it was one of the best ice scrapers I have ever found, it cleared the snow and ice in about five minutes.

So, not only will our brochure act as a gateway and a pathway to a whole new life and career as a coach it will also come in very handy as an ice scraper

The reason I had been away was to run a residential course for our diploma students and a number of other seminars and meetings with our team in Romania.

After an initial three days in Bucharest
We then spent four days in the tiny town of Predal in the Carpathian mountains just south of Transylvania.
We had people from all over the country and some of our training team had flown in from other parts of Europe.
The scenery was spectacular.
Here are some photographs from my bedroom balcony.

The course went incredibly well and it also gave me a chance to observe some of our new Romanian training faculty in action.
I am delighted that we now have a full faculty of over 20 people in Romania.Filling such roles as

Country manager, administration people, trainers, mentors, final assessors, markers of written work, webinar leaders,

We are also now beginning to take on board a number of strategic partners throughout Romania which is proving to be very successful for everyone concerned.
In fact we have created a special website for people who are interested in becoming a strategic partner
www.noble-partners.com

It was so lovely to work with our Romanian team again and also to get to socialise with everyone.
Here is a Team Photo of those on the course.
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( the Romanians do love to socialise )
In the evening we had some wonderful music and dancing -here are just some of the team enjoying themselfs on the dancefloor-

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I’m looking forward to my next trip on 17 January 2011.

I got into work early this morning just as the sun was rising.
As I was walking along the promenade to our office I took some photographs from my iPhone.
I thought you might like to see them

I do so much enjoy getting into work early like this, it is so quiet and serene and I find I am able to get so much work done before everyone else arrives at 9 AM.
Right now I’m organising a very special Introduction to Colour Coaching. We will hold it on the afternoon of Saturday, 13th November at the Corus Hotel on Bayswater Road in London. From 2 PM to 4 PM.
www.colour-coaching.com

I have just got off the phone from Mandy and she has agreed to run this event herself, therefore anyone coming will actually get to spend private quality time with the person behind this whole division
Also she has agreed to run this event completely free of charge !!!

The only problem will be numbers. We are deliberately booking a smaller room so that the event will be intimate and cosy and people can get a real full hands-on experience of the Colour coaching opportunity. They will be able to experiment with all of the skincare and make-up and Colour drapes and will be able to spend a good deal of quality time with Mandy herself.

I’m also beginning to get quite excited about my forthcoming trip to the USA. I’m flying out on Saturday to Fort Worth in Texas to attend the International coaching conference.

I go there every year and it’s a great opportunity for me to meet some of the top coaches in the world and get a good view on what is happening in this wonderful industry of ours.
I’m going to be flying over with Gordon Piggott who is the general manager of Westminster Indemnity Insurance.I really like spending time with Gordon he is such an incredible person. It is like spending time with Einstein !!!! He has such an incredible mind.

Oh well, back to my e-mails now
Gerard

Got back very late last night from our most recent residential coach training programme at Eynsham Hall in Oxfordshire.
What an amazing time, I was so blown away by the quality of coaching that I have seen over the last few days. It is so amazing the way that using simple coaching techniques we can dramatically affect the lives of another human being.

I was also humbled by the commitment and effort that so many people made to be there.
I know that many people had to deal with lots of personal challenges and obstacles in order to attend this course.
We had people from 11 separate countries.
Scotland, Ireland, England, Netherlands, India, Austria, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, Egypt, Kenya.

I was so tired when I got home eventually last night that I slept like a baby, haven’t slept so well in ages
Back in the office now this morning catching up with e-mails, team meetings and planning, and packing again because I have to leave this afternoon to go to Luton airport and fly to Gdansk.

Although I’ve been to Poland many times this will be my first trip to Gdansk. I am looking forward to it tremendously.

We will be doing an ” Introduction to Coaching” at the hotel  Mercure Hevelius  on Wednesday.
I’m also looking forward to being able to see Karolina.
Karolina, is one of our head office team and she lives in Gdynia just a couple of miles from Gdansk, at the moment she is on maternity leave because she gave birth to lovely twins a couple of weeks ago
Really looking forward to seeing her, and catching up.

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

Last night I was interviewed by Denis Rancourt who is a well-known scientist, lecturer and radio host.
He runs a wonderful radio station details of which are on this blog site

http://trainradio.blogspot.com/

He interviewed me for approximately one hour on Canadian radio. We discussed mainly life coaching and corporate coaching, how it works and the impact it can have on corporate culture.
If you would like to hear and see Denis then he has done a very interesting and slightly controversial video which can be seen here on you Tube

Personally I agree with everything he says.

My interview will be available shortly,
Warmest
Gerard