Business Development Strategies

Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

Leadership can be a very challenging task. As leaders we don’t always get to choose who is on our team. In fact very often a leader inherits a team, of which most of the members have been there far longer than the leader, and may even know more about the work than the leader. Whatever the situation, one of the responsibilities of a leader is to motivate the team to all work together towards the common goal. This can be a daunting challenge. So often the team is comprised of very diverse members, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and work styles. The team dynamics are also often complicated by internal disagreements and personal conflicts. The leader, not only has work with this group of people, but also needs to achieve the results expected by their superiors.

Leaders can greatly benefit by being able to identify the types of personality characteristics of team members. By understanding the basic personality types, the leader can use individual strengths of members for the good of the team, as well as assign tasks that individual team member’s naturally excel in. A leader can also learn to communicate in a way that is motivating, by taking into account the needs, values and working preferences of different team members.

A good leader will see the greatest results by working and utilizing the strengths and working style characteristics of the personalities on the team. By correctly positioning the individual member strengths and compensating for weaknesses, the leader can bring the team into a productive balance and harmony.

A brief overview of the different values and working styles of the four main personality types demonstrates the importance of this knowledge being part of the successful leadership toolbox. The four types of personality will be described using the colours Gold, Blue, Green and Orange.

The strong Gold employee takes work and responsibility very seriously. Gold personalities want to contribute, be part of the team, and to be successful and productive. They respond well to recognition, rewards and incentives. However Gold team members need well defined responsibilities and structure, firm expectations and timelines as well as being reassured from authority that they are on the right track.

The strong Blue personality needs an open, social atmosphere to be able work well. Relationships are very important for them, and they need the freedom to be able to nurture relationships with coworkers, customers and employers.. Conflict and intense competition are painful for a strong Blue, but they will thrive in a positive, creative, service orientated atmosphere.

A strong Green personality is more noted for expertise rather than people skills. They are excellent working with facts, data, research and analytical projects. Greens shine in their ability for designing, understanding complex systems and strategy. Facts are of utmost importance for the Green, but they have a weakness for routine follow through and are somewhat insensitive in social interactions.

Orange team members are noticeable by their energy, skill and creativity. A key factor for an Orange is the freedom to be able to use their skills and abilities. If there is too much structure, or their boss is very authoritarian, the orange personality feels blocked and does not function well. Orange personalities like people and work well in a spirit of teamwork, competition and camaraderie. They are action orientated, though and become impatient with prolonged talking and detailed administrative tasks.

A leader, by knowing the colours of his team, can use this knowledge to blend the team members into a unified, well coordinated picture poised for success. By facilitating each team member to function in their areas of natural strength and motivating them by communicating in a way that inspires harmony and team work, the leader is well on the way to achieving extraordinary results.

The best place to turn to learn more about leadership.

We want to grab your attention to this article on leadership. It not only is interesting, but also has loads about leadership.

Why do organizations come together every year at the 2005 Excellence Fair held by the Professional Association for Computer Training?

You may be filled with astonishment with the amount of information we have compile here on leadership. that was our intention, to astonish you.

It is because something worked well for an organization and valuable information needs to be shared. This year at the 2005 Excellence Fair it was Cargill, the international food provider (located in over 59 countries), that was recognized for their Transition into Leadership curriculum that helps employees transition into leadership roles.

So, what is it about Cargill’s leadership curriculum that has led to such great success? It began when Cargill recognized that great team members also make great leaders. But, the insights, skills, and vision needed to be an effective leader must be developed, practiced, and learned over time.

As such, the focus of Cargill’s leadership development program is to provide new and aspiring leaders with the skills required to confront the challenges and opportunities that a leadership role entails. In the program, aspiring and new leaders learn how to guide, empower, and assist the efforts of others towards greater success. These newly developed leaders are instructed on how to lead people, make a difference in their work, and fulfill leadership expectations.

So how is this leadership development program different from all of the others? This program provides new leaders with the key tools for leading effectively, while at the same time making the program specific to the development needs of each attendee. Most programs on the market do not focus on the transformation process aspiring leaders must go through to maximize their effectiveness.

The Transition into Leadership curriculum was designed to:
Introduce the best ideas and practices in leadership today

Identify the significant differences between leadership and management

Determine the participants own leadership strengths and areas for improvement

Develop and practice sound leadership skills and abilities

Learn “best practices” through close affiliation with other Cargill leaders

It was our decision to write so much on leadership after finding out that there is still so much to learn on leadership.

Communicate effectively and reinforce, mission, goals, and vision

Take accountability for business results and team member development

Embrace change and challenge the comfort zone of team members

Looking for something logical on leadership, we stumbled on the information provided here. Look out for anything illogical here.

Cargill’s leadership development program places great importance on their employees and know that they are the key part of a successful future. As a result they seek the best programs in order to create development opportunities for their employees and leaders around the world.

Cargill selected CMOE to partner with them in the development and implementation of the Transition into Leadership program. At the Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness we have been helping Cargill to create, develop and implement their Transition into Leadership program and fulfill a variety of training needs.

Giving a word of appreciation or gratitude to this piece of writing on leadership would be enough encouragement to us to continue producing such informative articles on leadership.

25 Leadership Maxims

“We will never know how really good we are as leaders unless we are leading people to be better than they think they are.”

“Poor performance is less harmful to a leader than mediocre performance disguised as good performance.”

“Most leaders are striving to get the wrong results or the right results in the wrong ways.”

“The lowest forms of leadership involve rewards and punishments.”

“Getting along is not necessarily getting results.”

“If you can’t feel it, you can’t lead it, and they won’t do it.”

“Leadership is the trim tab of all careers.”

“Leadership is seeing hope in any adversity.”

“To make a difference, be the difference.”

“In leadership, you don’t have to expect the worse, you just have to make the most of it when it happens.”

“The best leaders make use of the simplest of ideas.”

“If you are always right, you are usually wrong.”

“The best way for a leader to communicate an idea is to bundle it in a human being.”

“The most persuasive art of leadership is to hide your leadership.”

“Refraining from action is sometimes the best action.”

“It’s not so much what you say as a leader that’s important; it’s the action the people take after you have had your say.”

“In leadership, the value of every need is in its use.”

“Leadership is not about living a easy life for ourselves but a hard life for others.”

“We ourselves are our own biggest obstacles to becoming better leaders.”

“Leadership is showing people not that they must take a certain action but that they GET TO take that action.”

“Half the art of listening is waiting.”

“To get the best out of people, embrace the best in them.”

“People are often unaware of the best that’s in them. When you show it to them, you are half way down the road to motivating them to be your cause leaders.”

“Achievement needs three things, the leader, the cause leader, and the moment.”

“In the long run, the most important results of leadership are not what we achieve but what we become in that achieving.”

10 Reasons Why Friendliness Is A Leadership Necessity
by Brent Filson

We’ve heard it many times, “It’s a dog eat dog world.” The trouble is, some leaders actually believe it. They conduct themselves like the alpha dog in a pack, holding sway through intimidation. This instinctive behavior helps insure survival in a dog world, but applied to the human world of organizational dynamics, it can lead to disaster.

Alpha dog leadership can eventually turn out to be destructive to the people, their organization, and the leaders themselves. To use another common metaphor, “That dog won’t hunt.”

After all, leaders do nothing more important than get results; and the best results are what I’ve been teaching for more than two decades, “more results faster, continually.” An alpha-dog leader might chew up people to get more results and get them faster, but I submit that it takes a far different personality trait to engender the “continually” aspect of the imperative. That trait isn’t the despot modeled by so many leaders, it’s … well, friendliness.

Having a friendly attitude as a leader means eschewing the alpha-dog way of leadership. It means being gentle, kind, helpful, and cordial in your relationships, even in times of anger and stress — ESPECIALLY in times of anger and stress. Here are 10 reasons friendliness gets far more results than an alpha-dog way.

(1) We stay in control. Apha-dog leaders seek to control others. But they misconstrue what control really means. In truth, such leaders are really out of control much of the time, since they’re at the mercy of their emotional outbursts and the reactions of others to those outbursts. In leadership, the best way to control a situation, i.e., the best way to get great results, is to put the people in control. Don’t constrain them through short-term compulsion but liberate them by playing the “longer game.” Unleash their initiative and creativity by allowing them to make free choices, and they will be under your “control” in more profound and effective ways than the alpha-dog leader could imagine.

(2) People respond more openly and positively to friendliness. Humans seek happiness; and friendliness is a great way to spread happiness. It enables you to communicate much more effectively because it bonds you with others in ways that anger, coercion, intimidation can’t. And that bonding is the stuff that great results flow from.

(3) We are modeling good interactions, bringing the future into the present. Whether leaders know it or not, their words and actions are carefully watched by the people they lead. People have an instinctive need to model those words and actions; or if they disagree with them, speak and act in opposite ways. By radiating friendliness, leaders are being the means that are the ends in the making.

(4) We make real issues relevant factors, not false issues like anger and intimidation. Friendliness tends to clarify issues; intimidation, because it is associated with fear, obfuscates them. So often intimidating leaders make themselves and their tormenting ways the issue. Whereas the real issues should be, how do we get results, how do we get more results, how do we get faster results, and how do we get “more, faster” continually? The fear they provoke is like crack cocaine, temporarily stimulating but addictive and in the long run destructive to the leader and the people.

(5) With friendliness, we set the agenda. “A good offense is the best defense” applies with friendliness. You should be on the offense with friendliness, displaying it even in challenging circumstances when it may take an act of disciplined courage on your part. This helps you set the agenda in terms of how people respond to one another in these circumstances. Of course, your friendliness will not affect some people who may be determined to subvert your leadership no matter what your attitude is; however, friendliness can, like the clearing of brush-lines to contain a forest fire, keep rancor from spreading deeply into the organization.

(6) We increase the chance that others will support our cause. The truth is that leaders can’t motivate anybody to do anything. The people make the choice to be motivated or not. Friendly leaders have the best chance of creating an environment in which the people make that choice. As Abraham Lincoln said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.”

(7) Our opponents can be put off balance. As a leader, you’ll often have people working against you, spoiling for a fight; and when they encounter a friendly attitude on your part, they may be thrown off balance in benignly effective ways. Furthermore, your friendliness can encourage others to take up your cause against them.

(8) With friendliness everybody has an opportunity to win. Unfriendly leaders often win battles but lose wars. They may compel others to get on board; but if those others do so out of compulsion and not genuine conviction and motivation, the fruits of any victories can become ashes. Most people welcome friendliness — even if they disagree with and even dislike the leader. Furthermore, our friendliness can prompt the people we interact with to reflect on their own character, a prerequisite for their choosing to be motivated. In an environment of friendliness, all parties have an opportunity to achieve something positive.

(9)Friendliness is fire prevention equipment against your burning bridges behind you. An opponent may seem to be your opponent today but in the future you may need him to be your partner in implementing changes. Friendliness gives us an opportunity to have productive relationships even with those who oppose us, enriching both the present and the future.

(10) Getting results through friendliness can take a lot less energy than getting results through coercion and intimidation. Friendliness isn’t an absolute necessity in leadership. I’ve seen great leaders who were terrific curmudgeons. It’s just that unfriendly people have to go through a lot more trouble getting people motivated.

Two caveats. One, friendliness can be mistaken for weakness. In fact, friendliness can BE weakness if it manifests as a way of avoiding challenging people to do the hard things to get great results. In leadership, friendliness has a clear function which is to people achieve constantly improving results. This entails your challenging people to do what they often don’t want to do. Anybody can be nice to them and let them do what they want. But a leader must continually be challenging people to struggle mightily for extraordinary results. If friendliness doesn’t help you fulfill that function then it’s simply a lifestyle choice, not a leadership tool, and ultimately in terms of leadership, a weakness.

Two, even if you do use it as a strong leadership tool, you certainly can’t be friendly 100 percent of the time. If you try to be, you’ll find yourself becoming a rather one-dimensional leader. One of the most difficult accomplishments facing any leader is simply being who you really are – especially under pressure. To force-fit friendliness in a situation where you might not ordinarily exhibit it or to use friendliness to manipulate people into conforming to your wishes is not the best leadership uses of friendliness.

It may be a dog-eat-dog world; but by progressing in the Way of friendliness, leaders can invest their lives and this world with moments of beauty and meaning — and get more results in the bargain.