Lessons in Leadership Mastery
The Power to Influence
There are many ways up a mountain. There are many styles of leadership, many books, tapes and beliefs on what leadership is or is not. At the Military Academy at West Point New York, which has been the home of some of the world’s most influential leaders, there is a simple but powerful definition of leadership, “the ability to have someone want to do what you want them to do”.
As simple as this may sound it can be very difficult. Many leaders lack distinction between power and force. Force always meets with resistance, requires continual energy, diminishes over time and often does not have agreement. Power, on the other hand grows the more you use it, has the ability to influence and empower someone and can produce a new future, new possibility and opportunity in the life and business of an individual or team.
The most successful leaders I have worked with have this ability to make people want to do what you want them to do. Not only that but people want to follow them wherever they go and they have the ability to create a conversation within the organisation that empowers others to want to become leaders.
Great leaders influence people, they communicate the future, develop and conceptualise the overarching vision or the long-term purpose that is to be achieved.
They clarify and articulate goals and objectives and see that the long-range plans and the organisational structures that will be needed to enable the organisation to attain its goals are specified. But most of all they have a willingness to take final responsibility for results and outcomes.
When I ask a leader who is accountable for the success of the business he will say, “I am” but will his employees say the same thing? Will the person sweeping the floor answer the same way? Will the person answering the phones and putting nametags on visitors tell you that they are the ones accountable for the success of the business?
Breakthroughs in business begin by creating a culture of leadership everywhere. It takes more energy to follow than to lead. Why? This is because leadership is inspiring and has a much higher energy level then following.
So how do you implement a culture of Leadership within an organisation?
We work in two ways, first by bringing a team of managers together to align them on the language of what we would call High Performance. Great results begin with great questions and our two-day leadership event is an inquiry into what it takes to be a hero in business today. Following the two-day event we implement what we call 90 day coaching programmes. They are designed to support the individual managers in the language of High Performance.
Like becoming affective at anything in life it requires practice and this programme is designed to support a leader in the art of influence.
Why would an organisation need something like leadership development?
In a world of fast moving technology and changing systems we have discovered that the competitive edge resides not in your equipment but in your leaders’ ability to see and take advantage of new openings, opportunities and actions. Your current results are consistent with the way you see things in your life and business. If you have ever had a good sports coach, he had the ability to make you see things differently. When you can see differently, you can act differently and as a result produce new and more affective results.
Coaching in business, just as in sports, is the opportunity to let a professional observe and coach you from a view not available to the player. There is a saying, “Birds to air, fish to water and humans unto themselves”. We are blinded by the paradigms we live in, we cannot see outside our industry or ourselves. Leading innovation does not come from inside an industry but from the ability to look outside the box in which you live and operate.
How does one measure the success of a subjective phenomenon such as leadership development?
With numbers it is easy to determine the success of an objective but as we move into the world of leadership things become subjective. Though it may take a more focused approach we believe you can measure the success of anything. Putting benchmarks in place even for the first time begins the process of capturing the information needed to determine the relationship between leadership and company success.
We work within the world of breakthroughs and not incremental predictable measurements. What you can predict in terms of market share or success is not something you need any support from an outside organisation to accomplish. Breakthroughs occur by engaging in an innovative conversation about leadership, these leadership distinctions can be measured for their level of effectiveness.
What is the difference between coaching and training?
There are levels of development within an organisation. In the early stages of a company you may invest in a lot of training to give your people the skills needed to be more affective in their jobs. This has a lot to do with learning the tasks necessary to perform a function or role.
As the person becomes more affective at their tasks they begin to look to the future, leadership is about the future and your ability to manage risk. Most people end up in a management role as the result of becoming a technical expert or top salesmen. From here they may be given a team to lead. Many people we speak to in this position have not been given the distinctions in leadership needed to powerfully influence their teams.
Coaching then happens in a conversation between the player and the coach. This conversation must have the ability to create for the player what we call new openings for action that result in new possibilities, opportunities and results. Knowing what conversation you are in can determine how affective you are in any arena. From the spectator’s point of view it is a conversation of observation, from the player’s point of view it is a conversation of action and from the coach’s point of view, a conversation for creating new ways of seeing things differently.
When done affectively coaching has the ability to produce breakthroughs in performance and improve the quality of a person’s life. Highly affective people realise the benefit of a good coach.
It is said that repetition is the mother of skill; if you add the philosophy of constant and continuous improvement you begin to move toward mastery.
The Most Passionate Coaching Sessions In Business Today!
What Leaders Contribute?
- Develop and conceptualize the overarching vision or the long-term overriding purpose to be achieved.
- Clarify and articulate goals and objectives
- See that the long-range plans and the organizational structures that will be needed to enable the organization to attain its goals are specified.
- Allocate the responsibilities and determine the accountability for major departments, or segments of the task.
- Determine the means to be used to monitor results, measure progress, and decide the corrective action that may be required.
- Act as a key resource for solving problems and overcoming difficulties encountered along the way.
- Communicate goals and objectives and any modifications or changes in direction.
- Motivate, inspire, encourage, and reward effort and achievement; correct and discipline unsatisfactory performance; maintain morale and team spirit.
- Take final accountability for all results and outcomes - 'the buck stops here'. All responsibility rests on your shoulders.
- Represent the group or organization in its dealings with the wider environment