I bet you can name 10 highly effective
leaders right off the top of your head.
Not only that, you can give me three to
five good answers on why you consider
them to be a good, solid leader. And I
bet not all of your answers are the
same. In fact, your list would probably
have many different kinds of leaders on
it.
My point?
When a senior executive or organization
comes to me to ask NMA to coach, train
or help them develop an executive
development plan for their key senior
leaders, I have to smile.
How
do you know you need leadership training
in the first place? How do you know you
need to hone the leadership skills of
your executives and organization? If
your own personal list of leaders is so
diverse, how do we in fact develop a
plan for leading for organizations
and/or for individual leaders or teams?
A paradox.
If you visit Google and search on
“leadership development” you will find
155,000,000 possible links to
investigate. You would think with all
this information and sources to develop
leadership standards for leaders, the
job of doing just that would be easy.
When we do our leadership and
communication training we have an group
exercise that asks the participants to
think of the "leadership characteristics
of a world class leader”. We give them
a sheet of paper to list their answers.
We then ask them to team up with a
partner and discuss their answers and
then decide their 10 top characteristics
of a world class leader.
The next phase of the exercise is to ask
the partners to join with a larger group
and repeat the same exercise…take all
the answers and pare the list down to
just 10 top characteristics of a world
class leader.
We then
ask the entire room -- it could be
hundreds depending on who I am speaking
to or training with -- to then take the
final characteristics we have gathered
from everyone in the room and hone it
down to 10 characteristics of a world
class leader. Sometimes we discuss with
passion which characteristics are most
important and sometimes it is easy to
determine them. The point is that
during the entire exercise there is no
agreement on what the ONLY leadership
characteristics are, but that there are
many.
As
an expert resource to the process of
executive development, I know that
people want to hone their leadership
skills. You don’t have to go looking
for a list of the 10 ten characteristics
of a world class leader because your
people are already leaders. They just
don’t fully realize it yet.
The list of characteristics of a highly
effective and influential, results
oriented, world class leader is
endless.
Caring, trustworthy, integrity, honesty,
smart, analytical, risk taker, thorough,
innovative…
What you are looking for is a person’s
or an organization’s strengths. What
you do best? What you love? What
gives you a reason to get out of bed
early and work diligently the whole day,
month, year?
What is it you are passionate about,
what makes you strong are your
individual characteristics and values.
Its so simple. Lead with what you
value and you will lead in a powerful
way.
What you love, how you behave and what
you value are what make you a
recognizable and influential leader –
wherever it is that you are leading.
So it does not matter what you list on
the top characteristics of a world class
leader list. The variety of the
characteristics needs to be connected to
the individual, their strengths and
values. What does matter is that you
know what is most important to you in
order to lead. If you were to compare
your list to someone else’s is may be
very different, but what you would have
in common is what allows all of us to
make a contribution.
You would be privileged to see what that
person VALUES. You would learn what you
value. And once we find out what we
value, there is no stopping our
leadership gene. It just comes sliding
out and goes stomping toward the finish
line.
Next time you meet a great leader, find
out what she or he values. You will
then know what their valued leadership
characteristics are. You will also know
much more about what drives that person
to lead well and to contribute in a way
that you know will produce the needed
results. Once you have aligned your
people with their talents, values and
strengths and the mission/vision of the
organization, you will have developed a
very solid leadership plan.
In next
week’s newsletter we are going to talk
about how you go about discovering the
strengths, values and talents in your
people and organization. These
distinctions will help you move past
some limiting notions of how really
good you are already.
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
Please
note that we have changed the October
date of
ROADMAP “Speaking with
Influence” Teleconference.
The next teleconference in the
F'REE ROADMAP “Speaking with
Influence” Teleconference Series
will be on:
NEW DATE!!!
WHEN: Wednesday,
October 17,
2007 at 7:00pm (Eastern Standard Time)
TELECONFERENCE LINE:
605-475-6000 PIN:
879916#
DURATION: One (1) hour
Each
ROADMAP “Speaking With Influence”
Teleconference will be recorded and available for
download for those who could not make
the call. Watch our weekly newsletter
for details. The November
teleconference call in the
ROADMAP “Speaking with
Influence” Teleconference Series
is scheduled for:
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 7:00 PM
EST
I enjoy spending this time with you.
Please let me know how I can continue to
support you in your leadership
development.
Natalie
Natalie R. Manor, CEO
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