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Leadership Defined

"Leadership is influencing people to get things done to a standard and quality above their norm. And doing it willingly."¹⁵

As an element in social interaction, leadership is a complex activity involving:

1. a process of influence

2. actors who are both leaders and followers

3. a range of possible outcomes - the achievement of goals, but also the commitment of individuals to such goals, the enhancement of group cohesion and the reinforcement of change of organizational culture.¹⁶

Effective Leadership as a Source of Competitive Business Advantage

Leadership is imperative for molding a group of people into a team, shaping them into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage. Leader know how to make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their performance. Leaders also know how to balance  the individual team member's quest with the goal of producing synergy - an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs. Leaders require that their team members forego the quest for personal best in concert with the team effort.⁹

Role, Task, Responsibility, and Source of Power of a Leader

• The role of a leader is to create followers.

• The task of a leader is to bring about constructive and necessary change.

• The responsibility of a leader is to bring about the change in a way that is responsive to the true and long-term needs of all stakeholders.

• The greatest source of power available to a leader is the trust that derives from faithfully serving followers.

Learning to Lead

Effective leaders recognize that what they know is very little in comparison to what they still need to learn. To be more proficient in pursuing and achieving objectives, you should be open to new ideas, insights, and revelations that can lead to better ways to accomplishing goals. This continuous learning process can be exercised, in particular, through engaging yourself in a constant dialogue with your peers, advisers, consultants, team members, suppliers, customers, and competitors.

Leading others is not simply a matter of style, or following some how-to guides or recipes. Ineffectiveness of leaders seldom results from from a lack of know-how or how-to, nor it is typically due to inadequate managerial skills. Leadership is even not about creating a great vision. It is about creating conditions under which all your followers can perform independently and effectively toward a common objective.

James O'Tool⁷, a noted management theorist proposes a new vision of leadership in the business world - a values-based leadership that is not only fair and just, but also highly effective in today's complex organizations. It is based on:

• your ideas and values

• your understanding of the differing and conflicting needs of your followers

• your ability to energize followers to pursue a better goal that they had thought possible

• your skills in creating a values-based umbrella large enough to accommodate the various interests of followers, but focused enough to direct all their energies in pursuit of a common good.

Building Better Leaders through Attributes

Leadership attributes are the inner or personal qualities that constitute effective leadership. These attributes include a large array of characteristics such as values, character, motives, habits, traits, motives, style, behaviors, and skills.

Results-based Leadership

What is missing in most leadership-related writings and teachings, is the lack of attention to results. Most of them focus on organizational capabilities - such as adaptability, agility, mission-directed, or values-based - or on leadership competencies - such as vision, character, trust, and other exemplary attributes, competencies and capabilities. All well and good, but what is seriously missing is the connection between these critical capabilities and results¹. And this is what results-based leadership is all about: how organizational capabilities and leadership competencies lead to and are connected to desired results.

Coaching - a Vital Skill for Leaders

The new breed of leaders recognizes that autocracy no longer works, yet that employee empowerment alone is not enough. The skills of coaching have lately been rediscovered by more effective organizations and teams. Your cannot be a leader without a following, and you have to delegate appropriately. The leader is best placed to enhance the performance and learning abilities, on the job, of colleagues. Coaching aims to enhance these abilities. "It involves providing feedback, but it also uses other techniques such as motivation, effective questioning and consciously matching your management style to the coachee's readiness to undertake a particular task"¹⁰... More

Super-Leadership - Leading Others to Lead Themselves

Super-leaders help each of their follower to develop into an effective self-leader by providing them with the behavioral and cognitive skills necessary to exercise self-leadership. "Super-leaders establish values, model, encourage, reward, and in many other ways foster self-leadership in individuals, teams, and wider organizational cultures".⁵

An important measure of a leader's own success is he success of his or her followers. The strength of a leader is measured by the ability to facilitate the self-leadership of others. The first critical step towards this goal is to master self-leadership. If leaders want to lead somebody, they must first lead themselves... More

Ten3 Business e-Coach, version 2004b. Founder - Vadim Kotelnikov. © Vadim Kotelnikov, Ten3 East-West & GIVIS

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