Friday, February 27, 2009

Leadership With Attitude (Part 2)

This is the second part of the “Leadership with Attitude” post.

In the last post, we listed four important attitudes that a leader must adopt to be credible and successful. I will try to complete the list in today’s post. You must realize that this list could go on for a very long time. I’m just trying to capture the essence of what it takes to be a good leader.

So, let’s continue this list.

Organization
The leader must demonstrate his leadership by being the instigator of actions. He must view the path that will lead to success and guide his followers all along. He must act like a conductor and direct every action that his group takes. This is not to say that a leader will not let his people take initiatives but he will guide these initiatives and ensures that they are going in the right direction.

Communication
A leader MUST communicate! How can you direct a team of people if you cannot communicate adequately? This is just impossible! Your followers must know what you have in mind. They must understand the path that you want to take. It is your job to communicate your vision properly so that your people will not just understand where you want to go, they will embrace the vision and care for it!

Involving
A good leader will ensure that everyone who needs to be involved is involved. He will listen to people; he will give everyone a voice. He will make sure that everyone has a good reason to follow his vision.

Humility
A good leader is humble. He leaves his ego at the door. His success is always the team’s success. He is able to see and accept when someone else has a better idea and embraces it! He is not afraid to acknowledge his mistakes.

This concludes the list. All these attitudes compose what I would call the leader’s presence. The attitude that a leader adopts is what will make him unique and recognized as a leader (or not :-).

Reviewing this list, you can see that to become a good leader you must work on yourself. There are some techniques that you can learn (how to conduct a meeting, how to speak in public, etc). However, real good leaders have great, rich, and profound personalities. This is tougher to develop than techniques but it is essential to becoming a true leader!

So, do you think there is more to it than what I put in the list? Have I gone too far? Comments are welcome as usual!

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Leadership With Attitude

Dear followers,

The manager gets in the meeting room. He is 15 minutes late. The meeting has already started since someone else took the initiative to start gathering information from the various participants. The team is used to such a scenario! The manager then asks:

- What is the agenda for today? What do we need to discuss?

Someone then replies:

- Well, you were supposed to talk to us about the plan for next year. Don’t you remember?
- Ah yes! The annual plan. Well, I have not worked on it at all. I’ve been side-tracked by something more interesting. What else?

A cell phone then rings. The manager leaves the room to take the call. He never comes back.

Do you think that manager is a good manager? Of course not! However, sadly enough, I’m sure you have experienced scenarios similar to that one at least once in your corporate life. A manager shows up late and unprepared for a team meeting. His attitude does not show very much respect for his employees, doesn’t it?

I think leadership is made of two components: process and attitude. I have a mini-course coming up shortly on the process of leadership (more on that later), but in this post and the following one, I’ll try to give you indications of what should be the attitude of a good leader. If I miss some or if you disagree with the list, then please post your comments so that we can start a discussion!

Integrity
This is probably the most important attitude that a leader needs to have. A manager must do what he says he will do. If he does not, how can he expect his team members to deliver when he will ask them to? When you tell your team that you will have something done by a certain time, always make sure that it is done and well done!

Interest
The leader must show interest in all the tasks that his followers are doing. Just imagine if a leader delegates something to one of his team members and does not even remember that he delegated that task. How will the team member feel, you think? Do you think that he will complete the task or feel good about doing so? Without interest, the leader loses his credibility!

Passion
I mentioned in the previous post that a leader must have a vision of the future for the team. He must show a lot of passion towards this vision if he wants to have people following him. The road can be bumpy. Only communicated passion can ensure that people will push through and finally succeed.

Respect
A leader must show a lot of respect towards his team members. He must trust them and be proud of what they do! Without respect and trust, there are no teams possible! A good leader must know that.

I’ll add more pragmatic elements of the leadership attitude in my next post but until then, what do you think of this list so far? Are you a good leadership example, showing the right attitude?

Friday, February 20, 2009

Shaping The Future!

Dear leaders!

My daughter has been playing the violin for five years now. Every night, I sit down in her room while she practices her scales, studies, and various pieces. Last night, like every night, I was helping her with a concerto she is currently studying. She had problems with giving the right character to the piece. She was playing the notes, but she was not able to go beyond playing the notes. She was really struggling with that!

I then asked her if she had an idea of what the concerto was supposed to look like at the end. I asked if she was able to hear in her head what she had to play. She admitted that she had no clue. This was precisely her problem. She was trying to follow the indications written on the music sheet, but she did not have a clear picture of what the end result should look like. So, instead of struggling with the music, we then started to create that vision of the concerto and made it a fun event!

I think we can look at that event and place it easily in the context of leadership. At the basis of any action, there needs to be a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished. There just cannot be successful action without clear vision of the result. To be called a leader, someone needs to be able to create a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished. If that vision is not present, then there cannot be a concerted effort towards a common goal.

A leader can thus be seen as someone who is shaping the future! Having a clear idea in mind as to what the future should be, he or she can create a sound plan of action to successfully attain this goal. I personally feel that having a clear picture in mind of the future is what distinguishes good leaders from poor leaders. With a clear vision, someone can really move things and people to attain it. “Faith can move mountains” as they say. The vision becomes the power of the leader!

And you, dear leaders, do you have a clear picture in mind of what you are trying to achieve? Please share your thoughts with us by posting comments here!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Starting Something New: An Act of Pure Leadership!

Dear managers and leaders!

Isn't it funny how starting something new is always extremely exciting but difficult at the same time! Starting something is usually the realization of a dream so it is really exciting to get to that point. You have been preparing for this moment for so long! Gathering ideas or things, making plans, making sure that everything will be ready for this intense moment when you finally reach this point of no return! You will finally make your dream come true! How exhilarating!

However, starting something also means that change is coming to your life. You are going from one state to a different state. The initial state can be tough or far away from what you truly want to live, but it is still a known state. Going from a known state to an unknown state can feel like jumping off a cliff without knowing if you’ll finally be able to fly or if there will be a safety net to catch you if you actually fall!

Starting something also means that you need to finally expose to the world what you have had in mind for the last while. It is always scary to show people what you have been hiding for so long, to show who you truly are! Will people accept you with this new thing you’re starting? Will it work? Will this dream still be what you want once it becomes reality? What if it fails miserably? All those questions can make you shiver and paralyze yourself, sometimes enough to stop all activities! They are also really good reasons to procrastinate! Aren’t they?

Writing this first post on the Manager's Corner's blog leaves me with exactly these feelings! I’m excited and frightened at the same time! I've been dreaming of starting this blog for such a long time. Looking at other blogs to find the right style, gathering data and ideas to share with the management and leadership community I want to create. So I'm so excited about finally sharing all my ideas and theories on management and leadership with the entire Internet world! At the same time, I’m scared to death to expose myself to the world! Will people like what I’ll do? Will they actually benefit from what I have to say? So, starting this blog also has its fare share of fright and excitement!

You know, thinking about it some more now, isn’t starting something what leaders do every day? Leaders look at the current state of affairs, create a vision of the future for the new state they want to attain, and then build and execute a plan to go from the initial state to this new state. I tell you, leaders are professional at starting new things and they know a good deal about the fear and excitement associated with it! Yes, starting this blog is an act of pure leadership!

What about you? As leaders who are starting new things, do you also experience the mixed feelings of fear and excitement?