Leadership and Management Development
Leadership and management require that you set goals
This six part essay covers the six major themes of leadership and management development.
The six leadership and management development themes are as follows:
Your leadership and management development programme needs to be centered on the six essential leadership management skills, namely the ability:
- To set and achieve your goals.
- To communicate clearly.
- To manage time and prioritise, and delegate work.
- To manage conflict and handle difficult people.
- To create and sustain a positive mental attitude, especially during tough times.
- To inspire others and create a positive, productive atmosphere.
Leadership and management development
Your organisation needs people with good leadership and management ability. But leadership and management is a complex set of skills. You therefore may need to train some of your people in the art and science of leadership and management. And you may, therefore be on line, looking for a good leadership and management course that will teach them all the essential skills that will allow them to develop their abilities as a leader- manager.
Question: What are the essential skills that will allow your people to develop their skills as a leader and manager?
Answer: There are six primary leadership and management skills. Each leader manager must possess these skills if they are to function well in the role. To the degree that any one, or combination, of the following skill-sets is missing from any individual member of the management team, is the same degree that he, or she, is likely to fail as a leader manager.
In other words, each of the following skill sets are essential skill sets for the leader manager.
The ability to:
- Set goals and achieve them within the agreed time limit.
- Communicate with accuracy and clarity.
- Plan ahead; meaning, the ability to formulate practical plans of action, properly manage their time and prioritise tasks.
- Handle conflict situations and difficult people.
- Self-motivate and inspire a sense of self confidence and personal initiative.
- Inspire others to act, with a sense of rational optimism, and as a coordinated union of people, to follow the plan and achieve the goal, in the most efficient manner possible.
Let us look at each of these abilities, one at a time, and examine each one in turn.
1. The ability to set goals and achieve them within the agreed time limit
Success may be defined as, the achievement of a worthwhile and valuable goal. Success therefore, by definition, requires goals. To be successful requires that you set goals and achieve them. To be successful requires that your leaders and managers become what we like to call, "goal focused individuals".
Becoming a goal focused individual is the first step in becoming a better leader and manager. All successful individuals and teams are, and must be, goal focused.
If you want to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, then you would need to focus on that goal for years, before you could achieve it.
- If you wanted your organisation to rank number one in your industry, then you would have to focus on that goal for years, before you could achieve it.
- If you wanted to develop your products to the acme and the epitome of perfection, then you would have to focus on that goal, for years.
- The ability to hold a specific, long range goal in mind, if necessary, for years, is the first and most important step in becoming a better leader manager.
The alternative to becoming a goal focused individual is to not become a goal focused individual.
A person with no goal focus is a person that we call a drifter. A drifter is a person who lacks a clear vision of the future. A drifter may be a person with a great intellect, with a great education, with a great mind, and may have a very pleasing personality. But a drifter will never be a great leader or a great manager. How can he be? He is a drifter.
A drifter drifts. He drifts into work, he drifts around the corridors, and he drifts into meetings. During meetings he has a tendency to mentally drift off. At the end of the day, he drifts home again. There is no sense of goal focused mental activity. And you begin to wonder, "How come Jon is not doing better than he is? With his education and with his intellect you would expect him to be doing better than he is. Instead of running the whole show, Jon is in the slow lane".
The reason that Jon is not doing as well as his education and intellect would suggest he could, is that he is not yet, locked on target. He has not yet set his sights on a long range, worthwhile and valuable goal.
On the other hand Lindsey is a goal focused individual. She always is talking about where she sees the organisation, six months to a year ahead and is intently engaged in building plans and formulating to do lists that will drive the processes in the direction dictated by her imagination. Lindsey is always on the case and there is a sense that her brain is buzzing with ideas. She is intent and focused.
Lindsey is the leader and Jon is not. Jon may have the more impressive C.V. But nevertheless he is excluded from the class of leader, as he has not yet switched on his goal focus machinery.
What is the nature of a proper goal?
A proper goal should:
- Be specific and numerically described; (as opposed to being vague and ambiguous).
- Be of medium to long-range time frame.
- Be highly valuable, morally sound and beneficial to all concerned.
- Be logically possible, meaning; the goals should not require any miracles for their achievement.
- Be believable.
- Be embedded deep into the mind of the leader manager and should form a part of his or her everyday thinking.
As a leader manager, clarifying your goal, in any situation is the one most important thing you can do, because, if you do not know your goal, then you will not recognise objects that are consistent with the goal, and therefore opportunities to win will pass by unrecognised and unutilised.
If you do know your goal, then you will identify every object and all ideas that are consistent with the goal, and therefore your opportunities to win will multiply themselves exponentially.
Step one to leadership and management development is the development of a goal focused mentality and a simultaneous rejection of all signs of mental drifting.
Now you have achieved goal focus, you have your first leadership management fundamental.
What is the second leadership and management fundamental skill set?
Answer: the ability to communicate clearly.
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About the Author: Chris Farmer
Chris Farmer is the founder of the Corporate Coach Group and has many years’ experience in training leaders and managers, in both the public and private sectors, to achieve their organisational goals, especially during tough economic times. He is also well aware of the disciplines and problems associated with running a business.
Over the years, Chris has designed and delivered thousands of training programmes and has coached and motivated many management teams, groups and individuals. His training programmes are both structured and clear, designed to help delegates organise their thinking and, wherever necessary, to improve their techniques and skills.
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