Stress, confusion, fear and anxiety reduce our team’s effectiveness in the middle of a crisis. The Captain must make adjustments to his/her routine in order to help the team navigate towards safer waters. Two things the best leaders I believe should do during a crisis. Move to the Front Lines. This is a military analogy […]
As a leader, one of your greatest challenges is listening to your people’s ideas and assimilating them into something that is useful for your organization. This becomes even more complicated when you have people working with you who have “difficult” personalities. Difficult personalities exist in each organization. Just as with all employees, those with difficult […]
‘Top-Down’ (Authoritarian) Leader or ‘Face to Face’ (Horizontal) Leader Nowadays it is popular to talk about servant leadership. In management courses, we emphasise horizontal, ’on-the-floor’ leadership, where leaders and managers are in touch with those they lead. But if honor depends on position, titles and status, and if directors naturally give orders ‘from the top’, […]
In leadership workshops in Central Asia, we often compare the strengths and weaknesses of an authoritarian (power, position) leader with a people (relational) leader. Normally, a people leader receives a better rating. Everyone appreciates a leader who likes being with their staff, sits down with them for a cup of tea, and relates to them […]
Want to build fast and high? Start with this foundation “When trust goes up, speed will also go up, and costs will go down.” “When trust goes down, speed will go down, and costs will go up.” Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust True leadership influence is built on a foundation of trust […]
Leadership Can Be Taught Leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Leadership is not something mystical and ethereal that cannot be understood by ordinary people. Given the opportunity for feedback and practice, those with the desire and persistence to lead—to make a difference—can substantially improve their abilities to do so. Can leadership be taught? […]
What exactly is leadership? There are over a thousand definitions of leadership found in the literature. Pick one! Of course, we offer what works best for us in our work with students (and with managers, government officials, community organizers, health care providers, and educational administrators), but we don’t claim the last word on “defining” leadership. […]
Robert K. Greenleaf, in his book The Servant as Leader, says, “Foresight is the ‘lead’ that the leader has. Once he loses this lead and events start to force his hand, he is leader in name only. He is not leading; he is reacting to immediate events and he probably will not long be a […]
Write the name of a friend whom you greatly admire __________________________________________ Write one thing that you admire most about that friend ___________________________________________ Let’s take a moment and contemplate this exercise before you continue reading. I think you’ll gain an interesting and important insight. The odds are high that the thing you most admire about your […]