How Effortless Can You Make This ?
Lets broaden the concept of leadership for a moment.
Leadership may not involve having a team of people directly reporting to you. But it will involve other people following YOUR LEAD. So how effortlessly can you get other people to follow what you are advocating or suggesting?
The answer is very easily, when what you are proposing is what other people basically want in the first place. Leaders tend to emerge as a reaction to the wants of a community. For example, in Britain in the 1980’s when the country was in a severely disrupted state, the majority of people choose Margaret Thatcher as the individual best qualified to sort out the chaos. Fundamentally all leaders have to meet the needs of the community who want to be lead.
So a good starting point is to recognise the needs of your community. Whether that is the public of a team in a company, etc.
Let Yourself Be Energise By People Who Want To Be Lead
The basic principle of Natural Leadership, is that nearly everyone you will ever meet wants to be lead in some way. Individuals who want to be firmly in control of one aspect of their lives are often happier to be lead in others. This desire to be lead can be considered an energising force.
What people want is very difficult to rationalise, but surprisingly easy to sense. This is because inherently peoples desires are primarily emotionally inspired and not logically. If you are not sure about this, observe how diabolical Leaders manage to exist. Logically people would not wish for the “Unhappy Experience” that results. However, when a deep emotional desire to have unhappy experiences emerges, so do Leaders to fulfil this negative want.
Taking a positive outlook on this, sense and harness peoples desire to have productive and satisfying experiences. It is much easier to like yourself when you take this approach and you will get great results.
Have a Positive Vision or Message
Obviously you can only get so far on just giving people what they want with no thought to yourself. You also need to be personally passionate about what it is you are advocating.
Be Energised by your vision, connect the desire of others to experience the same positive proposal. Let this be a group experience.
IMPORTANT
Keep on emphasising the benefits of what you are proposing and doing. The common Leadership mistake is to devote too much energy to the detail of what a proposal is, and not enough to the benefit of achieving it. If your not clear why this is, observe the following.
How Enthusiastic & Energised do you get about discussing minute and complex details ?
Compared to..
How Enthusiastic & Energised do you get about an inspiring & achievable Grand Vision ?
Enthusiastic & Energised = Results Delivered
Have a Clear & Inspiring Vision or Goal
This is pretty obvious. Yet it is often forgotten. Simply observe the way in which politicians tend to get excited about being “In Charge”. In fact for many of then being in charge of anything seems more important than, and overrides the need for, any Inspiring Vision that benefits their constituents. Combine that with public apathy about having high quality leaders with an Inspiring Vision and you get the substantially poor quality political Leaders we have.
So to adopt the positive route your approach should be aimed at delivering a clear and positive vision to your community / team at work.
Develop and Get the Best from Your Team / Community
How can your positive influence accelerate peoples Personal Development? You already know that the best jobs to have, or places to work, are the ones that accelerate your abilities. Such positions are more exciting and whilst very challenging, are highly satisfying and significantly contribute to your development.
Conversely, some Leader are so intent on controlling their team or community that they seek to reduce peoples confidence and hence ability. Such operational models can produce good results in the short term, but tend to result in a “Revolution” in the long term. The high quality Creative Achievers you need will leave you and become your rivals.
Be the Leader...... Not a Micromanager
Micromanagement is a short cut to poor results.
Suppose you have a team of 1 Leader and 5 Managers. The Leader focuses on Strategy and Overall delivery of the Vision or Goal. Whilst the Managers focus on the practical delivery of the various aspects of the Vision or Goal.
If the No-One is doing the Leadership role because the Leader trying to do one of the Manager’s jobs, what will happen?
How many instances of this can you see or remember?
Note: This phenomena is typically inspired by a Leaders desire to deliver great results, but failure to be an effective Leader. (i.e. Good intention, poor result). Plus it tends to demotivate the Managers. Please avoid doing this. There are better ways.
Tracking
One of the essential roles of a Leader is to coordinate activities. Therefore you need to know what is happening.
Do you have a simple and systematic system for monitoring progress. Is it written down or do you use a computer?
A common mistake Leaders make, is to fail to upgrade from just using their memory. Your memory will be simpler and perfectly adequate on small jobs. Conversely, it will be inadequate on larger projects. Furthermore, you cannot email or photocopy your memory. So team members cannot readily be appraised of the big picture.
There is plenty more we can explore about this subject.
To do that more effectively and with particular focus on you individual needs, please contact us: