No matter the quality of your idea or the scope of your career aspirations one of the most significant challenges in achieving anything in business is obtaining the approval of your Boss. This is the person who can influence how you are perceived by the organisation you are working for and by other prospective employers. Your boss is a very important person and in order to succeed you need to be able to manage this relationship and find a way to get your Boss to say yes. This article will give you some suggestions on how to do just that.
They are the leaders that leave an impression, they inspire, they motivate and people follow them not because they have to but because they want to and people go above and beyond what is required in order to support them. They are the charismatic leaders, often people have said that you are either born with charisma or you or not. Yet many charismatic leaders have learnt what I'm about to tell you and that is charisma can be learnt and you too can become a charismatic leader. You just need to know how.
An iceberg is one of natures great wonders, a large piece of freshwater ice floating freely in water. An iceberg is beautiful and dangerous in equal measure yet what you see of an iceberg is just a fraction of what is going on, with typically 91% of an iceberg being submerged underwater. When I think of an iceberg it reminds me a lot of the challenges facing a leader.
Since his first appearance in June 1938 Superman has been one of fictions most iconic characters. The story of Superman is an inspirational one and contains many useful lessons which can help us become better leaders in our own lives.
Are You The Real Leader Of Your Team?
The leader of a team is not necessarily the person who has been given the title of leader. Within every team there is the official leader and the hidden or unofficial leader and both play very important roles in influencing the team in subtly different ways. Every team has a Supervisor or a Manager, a person who has been formally appointed as the leader of the team. This formal leader has the responsibility for the team and has the power to assign duties and reward good performance as well as punishing poor behaviour. This is our traditional view of a team's leader yet if we have a closer look at every team, we see another leader, one that wasn't officially appointed as such and may not even be aware that they are a leader. Sounds familiar? So who is this hidden leader?
When I delivered a leadership workshop recently I was asked the question "What was the best demonstration of leadership you have ever seen in person?" My answer surprised some people because it's not from the world of business or politics, for me the best demonstration of leadership was at the Final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup when Richie McCaw the Captain of the All Blacks led his side to victory over France.
More than any other time when things are bad we turn to our leaders. A workplace can be stressful in normal circumstances but when obstacles seem to be too big for the team to overcome and the future is uncertain stress levels rise and this impacts the productivity of the team. It could be a change process, a downturn in sales or a sudden departure of key staff. Whatever the reason, when we are uncertain we need direction and we seek that direction from our leaders. While these times of high pressure can be difficult for staff they can be even more challenging for our leaders who have to provide the much needed direction, so how can a leader effectively lead during bad times?
Here is the typical scenario. You start work at a new job and on the first day you are given a manual or a collection of booklets and within that collection is a code of conduct. This manual contains complex rules of what you can and can't do within the workplace, what you can claim as expenses and what you can't and the potential consequences of breaking these rules.
The reason why we value great leaders so highly is because they are so rare. Leadership, especially good leadership, is difficult to achieve. There are numerous reasons for this. In fact too many to share in this article but the main reason so many good smart people fail to become effective leaders is because leading is all about influencing people and people are incredibly complex.
It's a common question about leadership, are leaders born or made? The idea of leaders being born became popular nearly one hundred and fifty years ago through the works of Francis Galton. The English psychologist wrote the book "Heredity Genius" in 1869. The book examined the leadership qualities in the families of powerful men, comparing the effectiveness of leaders to their fathers and their children. Francis Galton concluded that leadership was in fact inherited and this formed the basis of people's understanding of leadership over the next fifty to hundred years.
Conflict is costing companies millions of dollars every year. Every team has conflict and in many times it can be a positive factor but when conflict is unresolved it can lead to wasted time and energy, reduced decision making quality, good employees leave, taking with them their valuable skills and experience which takes money had time to replace, poor employees tend to stay and end up demoralised and a destructive influence in the team which leads to lost work tome and productivity. All of this costs you money.
We know what leadership is when we see it, we know we need it and we know it's important but just how important is leadership? The impact of skills which are essential for every leader such as the ability to motivate and inspire are difficult to measure. If a team performs well how much credit should go to the leader? We have all seen teams that have performed well despite having a poor leader so just how important is leadership?
The job market is very difficult and the reality is that the majority of people settle for any job they can get rather than the job they really want. The certainty of receiving a regular pay check can override the dream of pursuing a better job and that is where the better job often stays a dream yet life doesn't have to be this way. You can get a better job because you just need to know how to start pursuing your dream and this article will help you with that journey.
Every Leadership role is difficult, as long as people are involved each with different personalities and motivations, leading people is never going to be easy. Yet the most difficult challenge a leader can face is when they are put in charge of an underperforming team, a team that has a history of failure and losing. If you as a leader are in this position don't be disheartened because you are in the lucky position to be able to make a huge difference to the team and to the lives of the individuals within the team. You just need to know how to turn a team of losers into a team of winners.
Without doubt, the most popular topic I get asked questions on is conflict. Regardless of the level they are at within their organisation, whether at an entry level or senior executive, conflict and how to deal with conflict situations poses a significant challenge for the vast majority of leaders. In this article I will look at the most common barrier to effectively dealing with conflict and what it takes to overcome this barrier.
The most successful teams are the teams with a compelling vision of what success looks like. In these cases the leader is able to articulate in a statement their vision. Their vision is an inspirational description of what the team would like to achieve and a defined direction as to how to achieve that goal.
For a leader to be successful they have to possess many qualities . They have to be competent in what they do, they have to be courageous, they need to be able to delegate tasks, they need to be able to motivate people as well as being a visionary but there is one quality that has been established as being more important than others. This quality once mastered will have the single most impact on the leader's team in terms of motivation, performance and productivity. It's the leader's ability to instil belief in their followers that they are better than they believed they were.
A lot has been written about success but very rarely do we spend time on what happens afterwards. It's difficult to climb the mountain of success but if you are not careful it's incredibly easy to fall off when you have reached the summit and if you do the fall can be dramatic.
People often say that there is a fine line between success and failure and there has never been a situation that demonstrates this as much as the rise and fall of Claudio Ranieri.
Let me start by stating the obvious. I'm sure you will agree that it's important for a leader to be viewed as trustworthy. That statement is beyond doubt. In fact it's difficult to imagine an effective leader who doesn't have the trust of their team but what is open to debate is just how important it is for a leader to be viewed as trustworthy. It's no longer just a desirable quality because it's the right thing to do. It's now been established that how trustworthy a leader is viewed by their team has a direct impact on the profitability of the business.