Applying Strategic Leadership in the workplace

What is strategic leadership and why do I need it?

Strategic leadership is a self-explanatory term, and even when
separated, still provides a meaningful definition. A definition of
strategic leadership can be summed up as the "ability to anticipate,
prepare, and get positioned for the future."

In my experience, I have been able to pinpoint specific examples of
colleagues who have exemplified strategic leadership in their
professions. I'd like to share some examples of how strategic
leadership is essential to a work environment.

A small company had been acquired by a larger firm. With this, the
current leader had been let go and a new leader was appointed to take
charge.

Anticipate and Prepare-Being acquired by a larger firm may bring more
awareness to a company or provide better benefits, but several cons
may get in the way at first. During a transition period, many
employees are sometimes left without a job, or have decided to move on
to other things in the wake of unsatisfied changes. It was no
different when a well-liked president of the company was phased out
due to financial setbacks. The firm took a lengthy process to make a
move until finally appointing an internal employee to serve as the
interim president. Left with a lot of the dirty work, the new leader
immediately went to work and restored and initiated productivity with
his employees. His biggest attribute was that he was prepared for this
new role before he was even appointed as the new president. His
natural work ethic had already groomed him for charismatic leadership
and when the opportunity for advancement came, he wasted no time in
taking charge and continuing the work. Likewise, a strategic leader
will be able to pick up the pieces and restore work productivity
regardless of a drastic change.

Being the cheerleader and still an enforcer, Teams leaders are
versatile figures held accountable for their employee's work
performance.

Get positioned for the future- A team leader's major objective is to
keep worker performance at a high and encourage improving results that
would ultimately lead to a brighter outlook and future. Preparing
employees now enables them to do such. Team Leaders have a weekly,
monthly or even yearly report to give so their main motivation would
be to constantly focus on the progress and performance of their
individuals. In order to maintain and continue a future of positive
results, an effective team leader will use strategic planning in
his/her strategic management. Mentally, he/she will find ways to
encourage employees to perform high to obtain team incentives, but
will also encourage strategic planning at the individual level.
Training employees to strategically plan in their prospective
territories will alleviate the leader with multiple responsibilities
and generate a more productive outcome in the work area. With a focus
on the individual employee, a team leader will have the power to
influence his/her employees to control their progress and look towards
a better outcome.

One department is flourishing with work productivity, while one
department is far behind.

Focus on the right energies- In a business world where deadlines are
demanding and profits are important, companies and their leaders will
hold work productivity as a high priority. A strategic leader will
observe less than optimum circumstance and move quickly to create
beneficial change. Saving time by focusing only on the right energies
will help a company profit. For example, an employee serves in two
departments, splitting duties between each. It is evident that his/her
skills are stronger in research and development rather than in the
sales department. A strategic leader may see more value in changing
this employee's role to work in this stronger area of expertise. At
the same time, a strategic leader will realize that this employee may
be able to provide unique insight across both functions that others
can not. Strategic leaders will observe these situations quickly and
waste no time in shifting employees to areas where both the individual
and organizations can benefit the most.

These glimpses give you some helpful scenarios of how strategic
leadership can be applied in your work environment. Should you have
any future problems with work productivity, profits or even issues
with your employees, address those concerns with some professional
guidance and you'll discover how an investment in your team will
result is bottom line results.

The Leadership Effect

There is no topic more important to business today than leadership
Leadership qualities are the distinguishing personal characteristics
of a leader such as intelligence, values and appearance. Leadership
occurs among people, involves the use of influence, and is used to
attain goals. Leadership is reciprocal, occurring among people.
Leadership is a people activity, distinct from administrative paper
shuffling or problem solving activity. Leadership qualities involve
the dynamic use of power and influence. Much has been written about
leadership qualities but...

What is the biggest enemy to developing these qualities?
The answer is You, Yourself. The nagging voice that says "Be like
him." You see when you are trying to be like someone else, the best
you can ever be is second best. Use what God has given you. Use what
you are good at... Follow your unique plan! Resist imitation and you
will develop unlimited leadership qualities.

How do you distinguish a man of distinction?
The minute you walk into the room, people judge you in an eye blink.
It stems directly from charisma, or lack of it. Possessing charisma
often brings to mind a historical figure or a celebrity.

Charisma is a unique leadership quality
We are so used to the word charisma that we seldom spend any time
thinking about why most of us view it in the way we do. It is entirely
learnable. It is about tapping into your natural ability to make
powerful impressions, even if this currently lies dormant or
under-exploited. You personal impact is your charisma effect. The most
important ingredient to develop this unique leadership quality is - do
not imitate.

Consider these words from one of history's greatest artists
My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you will become a
general; if you become a monk you will end up as the pope". Instead, I
became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

Remember
No one ever developed great leadership qualities by imitation. A true
quality of leader is - to be original. An original is hard to find but
easy to recognize.

5 Incredible Leadership Qualities

Some leaders are born, while others are created. It's often difficult, especially as a manager, to convince others to follow in our footsteps, but it is possible. Whether you're a natural born leader or not, the following qualities can and should be nurtured in order to enhance your leadership abilities.

Vision
Do you have a vision and are you able to share that vision with your team? Having a vision means you know what path you want to take in order to achieve optimal end results. Your communication skills must be strong enough to effectively convince your followers that your path is the right choice given the current situation.

Dedication
Are you really dedicated to your work? Are you willing, if necessary, to spend extra long hours at the office to get the job done? Your dedication will inspire your team members to share the same level of enthusiasm.

Humility
Humility means being able to recognize that you are no better off than anyone else on your team, regardless of your salary or job title. You're all human and you all make mistakes. Your job status doesn't exempt you from error.

Fairness
A good leader needs to be able to make fair decisions regardless of how he or she may feel personally about a given situation. Fairness means looking at the facts, not each team member's personal opinions about them, and then making an educated decision.

Humor
Let's face it - laughter is the best medicine. People are happy when they are laughing, and laughter eases tension and increases productivity (in moderation, of course). Those stuck in a boring or hostile workplace won't accomplish much. Put your sense of humor to work and keep the entire team happy.

These are, of course, only a few leadership qualities you should keep in mind but they offer you an excellent place to start. Take a look at your day to day interactions with your team and determine whether or not you need to tweak your leadership style. Good luck!

Three Ways of Defining Leadership

By Mitch McCrimmon

Here are 3 popular ways of defining leadership, each from a slightly different perspective:

   1. Leadership means being the dominant individual in a group.
   2. Leadership means getting things done through people.
   3. Leadership means challenging the status quo, promoting a better way.

For many, leadership means doing all three of these things but there are subtle and important differences. Let's look at them one by one.

    * Leadership means being the dominant individual in a group.

In primitive tribes and higher animal species the dominant individual was the leader. Being the leader simply meant having the power to attain and hold the top position for a reasonable length of time. Contrary to definition 2, you could be the leader without getting anything done through others. A leader was the person in charge even if the group was in a stable state where people went about their business as normal. As long as group members obeyed the leader's rules, the leader did not even need to be actively involved in the lives of group members, let alone get anything done through them. You could also be the leader in such a group without promoting a better way as suggested by definition 3. If you didn't need to be voted into power, why have a platform for change? You simply seized power; no sales pitch was needed on how you could make life better for the group. Yes, such leaders may have led groups successfully in battle and built great monuments with them, but, strictly speaking, you could be the leader without achieving anything through a group effort. The meaning of leadership, according to this definition, is simply to be at the top of the pile.

    * Leadership means getting things done through people.

Great leaders throughout history have led their groups to momentous achievements, but the idea that leadership should be defined as getting things done through people has been developed most fully by modern business, which is all about achieving results. As business has become more complex, the leadership challenge has grown form one of the simple issuing of orders to a few "hands" to the subtle coordination of highly skilled, diverse knowledge workers to build sophisticated machines and put men on the moon. There is a problem with this definition of leadership, however. It used to belong to management. Why the switch from management to leadership? And is this a good move? Up to the late 1970's writers used the terms leadership and management interchangeably but with more emphasis on management. For example, the management theorists, Blake and Mouton, developed their famous managerial grid in the 1960's. At the time, it was portrayed as a way of identifying your management style. Today, in line with the shift to leadership, the name is the same (managerial grid) but it is now positioned as a leadership style instrument.

Similarly, we used to talk about management style more than leadership style. Managers could be either "theory X" and task oriented or "theory Y" and concerned for people. But a profound shift in thinking took place in a revolutionary period lasting from the late 1970's through the mid 1980's. The cause of this upheaval was the commercial success of Japanese industry in North America. This led pundits to claim that the U.S. had lost its competitive edge because U.S. management was too bureaucratic, controlling, uninspiring and inept at fostering innovation. Rather than upgrade management, there was an emotional over reaction such that management was rejected and replaced by leadership. Since then, leaders were portrayed as theory Y, inspiring and concerned about people while management got saddled with all the bad guy attributes of being controlling, theory X, uninspiring and narrowly task focused. Similarly, the distinction between being transformational and transactional was originally launched to differentiate two leadership styles, but it wasn't long before it became used to separate leadership from management, the former being transformational and the latter transactional.

In our haste to trash management, we grabbed whatever tools were handy but with heavy costs. First, we painted leadership into a corner by suggesting that you needed to be an inspiring cheerleader to be a leader, leaving no room for quiet or simply factual leadership. Second, we created a bloated concept of leadership by banishing management. Third, by attaching leadership to getting things done through a team, we associated leadership irrevocably with being in charge of people, thereby ruling out positionless leadership. Yes, there is informal leadership but this concept is essentially the same as formal leadership except for their power bases. Like its formal counterpart, informal leadership still means taking charge and managing a group to achieve a target. In either case, you need to have the personal presence, organizational skills and motivation to take charge to be a leader.

    * Leadership means challenging the status quo, promoting a better way.

We have always felt, intuitively, that leaders have the courage to stand up and be counted. They go against the grain, often at great risk, to call for change. We only need to look at Martin Luther King, Jr. His leadership rested not so much on his oratorical skills - they were just icing on the cake. He was a leader primarily because he marched and spoke against injustice. He challenged the status quo and promoted a better world.

However, and this is the whole point here, if you think through what it means to challenge the status quo or advocate change, there is no necessary implication that you have to be in charge of the people you are trying to influence. The bottom line is that this third definition, when worked through fully, gives us a way to break the stranglehold of the previous two definitions. The benefit of this move is that we gain a clearer understanding of how all employees can show leadership even if they totally lack the skills or inclination to take charge of groups in a managerial sense, even informally. Think again of Martin Luther King, Jr. He sought to move the U.S. Government and the population at large to think differently about such issues as segregation on buses. His leadership efforts were successful when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such discrimination unconstitutional. Now, it is obvious that he was not in a managerial role within the Supreme Court. He showed leadership to this group as an outsider. You could say the same of Jack Welch who had a leadership impact on countless businesses around the globe through his novel practices, such as being first or second in a market. Again, those who followed the lead of Jack Welch did not report to him. They were not even members of a common group.

Leadership Reinvented for the 21st Century

If we cast aside the first two definitions of leadership, what is left? If leadership means nothing more than promoting a better way, then we need to upgrade management to take care of everything to do with getting things done through people. We need to say that management does not entail being controlling, bureaucratic or theory X, that they can be as inspiring as they need to be, good at coaching, developing and empowering people.

A critical supporting fact is that the power on which leadership is based is shifting from having a dominant personality to the ability to devise new ways of working, new products and better services. Businesses that compete on the basis of rapid innovation are engaged in a war of ideas and no one has a monopoly on good ideas. This is revolutionary because it suggests that leadership can no longer be about group domination. Now, leadership is a brief influence impact, an episode or act, not an ongoing state or role. You still may need a larger than life personality to ascend to the role of Chief Executive, but leadership conceived as a good idea for a better way can be very small scale and local. Any employee with a better idea can promote it, even if only by example, without having the personal presence to be promoted to a managerial role. Strictly, speaking there are no longer any leaders, only leadership. This view captures the fact that leadership is a fleeting state that can shift quickly from one person to another. It is an impact rather than a type of person or position. It must be so if it can be shown by outsiders.

Key Features of Leadership Reinvented

    * It does not involve managing people to get things done.
    * It comes to an end once those led get on board. It sells the tickets for the journey; management drives the bus to the destination.
    * It is a discrete episode, a one-off act of influence, not an ongoing position of dominance.
    * It is based on the promotion of a better way.
    * It can be shown bottom-up as well as top-down.
    * It can be shown by outsiders and between competing individuals or groups.

Thought Leadership - The Essence of Leadership Reinvented

Organizations today need all employees to think creatively and to promote new products. Promoting a better idea can be called thought leadership. In a knowledge driven environment, the newest, best idea influences others to get on board. When a product developer convinces top management to adopt a new product, that person has shown thought leadership bottom-up. But it can be shown across groups as well. When Microsoft develops products or services invented by Apple or Google, they are following the lead of these innovators. This also is thought leadership.

While the possession of great emotional intelligence and the oratory of a Martin Luther King, Jr. can help thought leaders make their case, it is vital to see that these skills are nice to have add-ons, not an essential part of the meaning of leadership. Technical geeks with zero emotional intelligence and an obnoxious influencing style can show thought leadership if they can demonstrate the value of their ideas. This is very empowering because it moves us away from the demand to develop sophisticated leadership skills as a precondition of showing leadership. Strictly speaking there are no leadership skills, only influencing skills and great content. Imagine asking Tiger Woods. after the end of the third round when he is in the lead, how he developed such great leadership skills. The truth is that he shows leadership through being great at the content of his profession, not by having a separate set of talents called leadership skills. On the other hand, there are very definite management skills. Getting work done through people calls for quite sophisticated interpersonal and organizational skills.

Content is King

The point of the previous section is that convincing content or substance can trump great style or form. Having a larger than life personality may still help you get to be CEO but this is the power of style over substance. If the prospective leader has enough charisma, it almost doesn't matter what is being advocated (the content). Conversely, thought leadership is most convincing if backed up by hard evidence. Having persuasive influencing skills helps but isn't essential. This means that front line knowledge workers can focus on what it really takes to show leadership: begin by developing convincing content. If your idea is good enough it will virtually sell itself. It's not that influencing skills are not valuable. The point is that we can define leadership without mentioning influencing style. Also, there is the fact that opportunists will get on board with a great idea with no persuasion whatsoever. Thus, if it is possible to show leadership without being personally persuasive, then having such skills cannot be a necessary condition to show leadership.

The Future of Leadership

Leadership reinvented can still be shown by CEOs. They just need to accept that much of what they do needs to be reclassified as management. They also need to devote more time to fostering leadership in front line employees, thereby taking empowerment a huge leap forward. If they want to reap the full innovative potential of all employees, CEOs and other managers need to engage and inspire employees more fully. Helping them to see how all employees can show leadership now could make all the difference between winning the war of ideas and falling further behind. Where knowledge rules, the old fashioned conception of leadership as group domination is dangerously obsolete. Complexity drives specialization. It is time to bring management back from the dead to take care of getting things done through people, leaving leadership to focus on finding and promoting new directions.

Definition number 1 may still be good enough to capture what happens in small street gangs and primitive tribes but it is most clearly out of date in a world that is a war of ideas. Number 2 is a mess because it is a total confusion of leadership and management. Only definition number 3 captures all leadership - that shown by people in charge, by those with neither the inclination nor the skills to take charge, and by outsiders like Martin Luther King, Jr. Uniquely, this definition also captures what it means to be a market leading company or a leading individual or team in sports. Leadership is simply a matter of showing the way. One of the many exciting features of this definition is that followers must choose to follow of their own free will because coercive power and authority are missing. Definition number 3 captures the essence of pure leadership.

Tips voor manager in spe

Duizenden mensen dromen van een managementfunctie . Maar een mogelijkheid is anders. Zodra u de keuze van , om teleurstelling te voorkomen is een goede beoordeling pre-in pas.

1. De grote valkuil : denken dat het een eer om een leidinggevende positie worden aangeboden. Elke staat moet het niet doen .

2. Zeg nee als je plezier hebt in je huidige baan, omdat er niets kan verslaan.

3. Heel belangrijk hoe je verandert communiceren in de organisatie.

Word een goede manager: tips van een rugbycoach

voor de Britse krant The Times verklaart rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward in een serie van podcasts uit hoe , in zijn beste begeleiding kunt u een team te geven : zorg ervoor dat je geen 'kantoor dictator ' is .

Woodward spreekt uit ervaring . Voor de niet rugby kenners : hij was in de jaren tachtig internationale voor de Britse rugby team en coachte de Engeland rugby union team 1997 tot 2004 . In 2003 won de Britse onder zijn leiding de wereld kampioenschappen. Hij werkte jarenlang bij Xerox in Australië en begon hij terug naar Engeland zijn eigen IT-bedrijf.

Ondertussen geeft hij lezingen , bijvoorbeeld , managers die willen weten hoe een groep van rugby mannen aanstuurde . Een van zijn geheimen : "Team schip.

Samen
In zijn vijfde bijdrage aan de Times -serie, legt hij uit wat dat is , de manager is de baas , maar het team dat hij de regels op. De manager en de leden van zijn team zijn altijd onderwerpen die op de tafel, maar de manager beslist. De "Code "geeft het team een eigen identiteit.

Deze manier van werken , volgens de sportcoach een aantal belangrijke voordelen: het schept harmonie, zijn nieuwkomers snel op de hoogte van het bedrijf en volgens Woodward , kunt u op deze manier ambitieuze doelstellingen.


tijd
Voorbeelden? Een van de eerste regels die rugby onder zijn leiderschap samen trok, is op tijd . Volgens de Woodward ' te laat respectloos : collega's die op tijd hun tijd verdoen in de Kamer .

Als je de beste wilt, moet je op tijd komen , zegt hij. Woodward en zijn team besloten samen dat te laat nog niet klaar was. De atleten besloten later dat tien minuten te vroeg was beter . "Als ik deze regel had gesteld , was er een conflict. "

Bron: TimesOnline

Vijf dingen die u als leidinggevende moet kunnen

het managen van mensen is niet altijd gemakkelijk . Hoe je je team uitgelijnd, gemotiveerd en begaan? Gary Topchick zet in een notendop wat een goede manager op zijn minst in zijn of haar staat .

1. Delegeren

In de rol van manager bent u minder met de dagelijkse praktijk betrokken en een hoger niveau afdeling proberen te functioneren. Een goede leider is dus een minimale inhoudelijke taken zelf helpen in plaats van zijn of haar personeel voor alle taken mogelijk zelfstandig uit te voeren . Volgens Gary Topchick , auteur van "Plotseling manager werknemers bij in vijf fasen , van junior tot senior associate .

1. In fase 1 , de focus fase maakt de medewerker veel fouten en vereist veel aandacht van de manager.


2. In fase 2 , de blinde zeilen fase wordt de medewerker gemotiveerd, maar mist hem of haar de juiste kennis en vaardigheden.


3. In fase 3 , de stabiele fase , werkt de werknemer , terwijl zelfstandig , maar op een gemiddeld niveau .


4. In fase 4 , de groeifase , voert de werknemer bij hoge tot zeer hoge niveaus.


5. In fase 5 , het doen fase, heeft de medewerker uitstekend en is ze misschien de inhoud zelfs beter dan de manager.

Uw doel als manager is om ervoor te zorgen dat de meeste mensen in fase 4 of 5 , zodat zij goed zelfstandig kan functioneren en u als manager dus ruimte hebben voor u op de grote (re ) lijnen te concentreren . Uw medewerkers te groeien naar fase 4 en 5, door opleiding, begeleiding , of training on the job van een meer ervaren medewerker .

2. Het geven van feedback

Feedback te geven heeft alleen zin als de tijdige en specifiek. Niet wachten om feedback te geven aan het jaarlijkse functioneringsgesprek . Als je na een half jaar een reactie op eerder werk , maak je bedrogen voelen. Ook worden specifieke voorbeelden geven en na te denken of laat de andere zelf te overwegen een betere aanpak. 'Je bent te langzaam "help de ander niet tot betere prestaties te bereiken. Bovendien putten positieve feedback meer, zelfs negatieve feedback een stuk makkelijker om te geven.


3. Motiveren

Zonder gemotiveerde medewerkers blijven alle verantwoordelijkheden niet op de schouders van de manager liggen. Motivatie bestaat grotendeels uit twee dingen: actief luisteren en vragen stellen. Van actief luisteren - of open vragen, door vragen en af en toe samenvatten wat de ander zegt - spreekt waardering. Door te vragen wat de ander net nodig heeft om gemotiveerd en geëngageerd zijn om te werken, je weet wat die persoon precies motiveert doen.


4. Positieve werksfeer

Een positief klimaat geeft energie , negativiteit kost energie . Een positieve werkomgeving te maken heeft met het creëren van een prettige , open sfeer waarin medewerkers op hun gemak voelen . In zulke vriendelijke sfeer durft een werknemer toe te geven fouten en collega's te spreken. Om een positieve omgeving te creëren , u als manager , een goed voorbeeld en laat je ruimte voor informele gesprekken . Behandeling is het toverwoord . Motiveren van werknemers is vooral een kwestie van praten met elkaar en vragen wat de ander motiveert.


5. Beslist

Een cruciaal element in de verantwoordelijkheden van de manager is het nemen van beslissingen . beslissing te nemen men zich door vijf fasen.

1. Het begint met het analyseren van het probleem.


2. dan de inventaris van de opties.


3. Dan weeg je een optie tegen een ander .


4. Nadat u een keuze maken en .


5. dat besluit beoordeelt u

Het helpt om de fasen te scheiden in te trekken of om het dilemma uit te leggen aan een onpartijdige partij. Te veel keuze te helpen weer niet , volgens psychologen , zijn we niet gebouwd. voor moeilijke beslissers , er zijn gelukkig een aantal boeken om te beslissen. Voor de beslissers die echt niet zelf omgaan met dit of de hele harde besluiten is er ook beschikking software, met alle voors en tegens tegen elkaar afgewogen voortgebracht .

Bron: vkbanen