Leadership

Hi Leaders An interesting leadership style that is becoming more prominent in the business arena is transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is a part of a style of leadership that focuses on supervision, organisation, and performance, in which leaders promote compliance by followers through both rewards and punishments. Unlike transformational leaders, those using the transactional approach are not looking to change the future, they look to keep things the same. Leaders using transactional leadership as a model pay attention to followers' work in order to find faults and deviations. Within the context of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, transactional leadership works at the basic levels of need satisfaction, focusing on the lower levels of the hierarchy. Transactional leaders use an exchange model, with rewards being given for good work or positive outcomes. Conversely, people with this leadership style also can punish poor work or negative outcomes, until the pro...

Hi All In the previous post I covered 12 leadership styles. Being an expat in a country and company that employ more than 95 nationalities, working with different cultures, is not a choice, but a necessity. "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people" Woodrow Wilson  With the march of globalisation and internationalisation growing louder and stronger, few successful businesses can now escape the need to work across cultures. Today's leaders need to be adapt at leading and managing people of different cultures; they need to listen to the "voices of the people" as well as understand what those voices may actually be telling them. This in essence is the crux of the challenge; when people perceive the world, communicate and view their leaders in different ways, the leader's ears may be ringing with misunderstood messages. The leader will come across cultural issues in many different guises. By way of illustrating the challenges of cros...

Hi Leaders Leadership style is the way a leader uses power to lead others. Every situation calls for a certain style, and so too the person you are leading. There's no defined leadership style one can apply all the time to every person you are leading. In this post, I will introduce you to the different styles. You will note that you will use more than 1 style in the day-to-day operations. It will also depend on the skill set, emotional maturity and understanding those you are leading. Not everyone is at the same level. In short, the specific situation will determine the most effect style to apply. Here are the 12 leadership styles:  Autocratic Leadership Autocratic leadership style is centred on the boss. In this leadership the leader holds all authority and responsibility, making decisions on their own without consulting subordinates.  Autocratic work environment does normally have little or no flexibility. There are very few situations that can ac...

Hi Leaders During a debate between my partner and I on the reasons why Nokia failed, it was evident that perspectives were divided. On one hand the technology was inferior to Apple, and on the other the business model that was flawed. But, I couldn't help inspecting it from an operational view. A company's success is directly related to the leadership...and there is was...organisational fear! What is organisational fear? Fear is the ultimate culture killer. Most organisations have some level of fear that holds back the potential of their organisation on many fronts.It’s not always a major incident that thrusts the subject of fear and unacceptable behaviour into the limelight. Fear at some level and the lack of full alignment around values and expected behaviours is rampant in many organisations today.Fear slows organisations down, causes hesitation, drives stress, and keeps literally millions of individuals from reaching their potential in effectively supporting th...

Hello, Leaders One of the most important steps to unlocking your leadership, is motivating yourself and most of all your team.  Motivation is a goal-oriented characteristic that helps a person achieve his objectives. It pushes an individual to work hard at achieving his or her goals. An executive must have the right leadership traits to influence motivation. However, there is no specific blueprint for motivation. As a leader, one should keep an open perspective on human nature. Knowing different needs of subordinates will certainly make the decision-making process easier. Both an employee as well as manager must possess leadership and motivational traits. An effective leader must have a thorough knowledge of motivational factors for others. He must understand the basic needs of employees, peers and his superiors. Leadership is used as a means of motivating others. So, how can you motivate your team? Here are 8 examples of how to motivate your team: 1. Start with sch...

Hi Leaders I recently had an assessment with my boss for a possible promotion, and while we were discussing leadership, he made mention of " servant leadership ". This totally resonated with me, as I have always believed that to be a leader, one must be a servant first to know how to lead. In becoming or being a servant, the most important step to this state of leadership is, becoming humble. Humility and ego do not see eye-to-eye and will definitely be at odds with one another. To give you a quick view of the difference between traditional leadership compared to servant leadership, here is a simple diagram: As you can see, the roles of importance has flipped. So what is servant leadership exactly? While servant leadership is a timeless concept, the phrase “servant leadership” was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in The Servant as Leader, an essay that he first published in 1970. In that essay, Greenleaf said: “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with th...

Hi Leaders "Let me ask you a question: If you were crafting a list of behaviour patterns that you think good leaders need to be successful, what would be included?" One person suggested that you needed to be politically wise to truly  manoeuvre  your way through a newsroom (gossip parties); that if you weren't, you would essentially be eaten alive. I understand the politics of a office chit chat all too well. But I also know that, as a leader, you can discourage it or encourage it. You can operate with what has become known as creative tension or you can let it be known that playing politics will get you absolutely nowhere. I did my best to practice the latter, and those working with me know I have no tolerance for politics and the gossip that accompanies it. Another point of contention came when a mid-level manager questioned whether you had to work longer and harder than everyone else to get ahead. And, he added, do people who work for you feel they have t...

Hello Leaders Welcome to this post. In Transformational Leadership I made mention of trust-based relationships with your employees or people. And for a good reason...what is the basis of any healthy relationship? Trust! And how can one build on trust without honesty...more than that, integrity!  The link between integrity and trust cannot be overestimated in the leader-employee relationship. At the end of the day, Long says executive leaders are judged on character and competence. “Character includes integrity and signals if the leader is friend or foe.” Integrity is one of the top attributes of a great leader. It is a  concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcomes . It connotes a deep commitment to do the right thing for the right reason, regardless of the circumstances. People who live with integrity are incorruptible and incapable of breaking the trust of those who have confided in them. Every human is born w...

Hello In the previous post I made reference to "Transformational Leadership", and thought I'd elaborate on the topic today. The business world has moved from management styled running of businesses, to leadership. It is the hype today, and it brings with it a lot of excitement, but also uncertainty in some cases. Trailblazers James McGregor and Barnard M. Bass saw the importance and the need for businesses to survive, to change the way they were managing or leading their teams. James defined transformational leadership as:  "leaders and their followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation."  Leadership became more about a team effort, than an individual in charge of the whole.  This was a revelation that stuck with me, and worked magic everywhere I implemented this behaviour. Now, I cannot imagine managing or leading any team any other way. The Backbone: Creating an inspiring vision of the future: A team needs a compell...

I have been fortunate to be in a leadership or management position since I have been 20, and 19 years later, a lot  of things have changed. We have moved from a management approach to running a business to leadership, which is all the hype today. And for a good reason, and tongue in cheek, for the better. So what is leadership? Leadership can be hard to define and it means different things to different people. Leaders help themselves and others to do the right things. They set direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership is about mapping out where you need to go to "win" as a team or an organisation; and it is (should be) dynamic, exciting, and inspiring. Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right. – Professor Warren G. Bennis Instead of listing the differences between a manager/boss and a leader, I will focus more on helping you define what kind of leader you want to be, how to ge...