Leadership Challenges

My Journey & The Secret To My Success

Welcome!

If you are interested in attracting wealth and success into your life using the law of attraction, then I’m confident you will find my own personal development story of at least ‘some use’ in your own journey. It’s a little longer than my average post, but you owe it to yourself to read it all and learn from my experience!

About 11 months ago I was in a terrible place. I felt like I was going absolutely nowhere. After being an employee for so long, I had become conditioned to feel like this was my only route – my only choice.

It turns out I was thankfully mistaken

Whether you’re a graduating student or a manager of 20 years, it’s likely you feel that you have very limited control over your life. Joining a graduate training scheme, or bidding for the next promotion seems like the natural path we should take.

But how often do we solemnly stop, think and weigh up whether the ‘obvious’ course of action is the right one? I had never really done that, and as a result I felt powerless and unhappy with where I was.

But June last year, I uncovered a resource that held the secret to the success that now fills my life with happiness (and wealth) just one year on. It is a powerful secret that I am more than happy to use Leadership-Expert.co.uk to share with you all and hopefully enrich your life as a result. It helped me to destroy negative thoughts and even create serious wealth in a short period of time.

“I Finally Found The Courage To Do What I REALLY Wanted For A Change”

The powerful resource I am about to tell you about should take all the credit for helping me to get to where I am today.

It taught me that almost everything that happens in your life is a result of your manifested thoughts and feelings. This is the fundamental theory behind the law of attraction. It’s an incredible theory and principle that I uncovered along with 10 other natural laws one year ago. The laws sounded simple at first, but contained such meaning and relevance to my life, that I was able to apply them, use them, and take advantage of them to improve my own success. They were taught with so much enthusiasm and wisdom that I couldn’t help but use them to achieve greater heights the moment I stepped back out into the world.

So what is this special resource that I discovered used to change my life for the better? Which course inspired me to create Leadership-Expert.co.uk, and to reach out and grow in other areas of my life?

It’s a downloadable course called The 11 Forgotten Laws

The 11 Forgotten Laws is a revolutionary audio course, taught by Bob Proctor, who starred in the hit personal development feature ‘The Secret’ and went on to receive international acclaim. The course contains 12 digital discs with 95 tracks that cover all elements of the 11 Forgotten Laws. These tracks are so enjoyable and empowering to listen to, and yet while having fun, you’ll also be re-shaping your future.

The course de-mystifies laws such as ‘the law of receiving‘ and ‘the law of supply‘. They underpin everything that happens in our lives, and conquering the concepts behind them will allow you to achieve more than you ever have before. If you will it to happen, it will happen if you can master these 11 forgotten laws.

Have you ever wondered why some people just seem to be ‘destined’ for a richer and more successful path than you? Why, even though they aren’t actively seeking wealth, they stumble into fortune and opportunity again and again?

That Isn’t ‘luck’. The Ability To Use The 11 Laws Simply Comes Naturally To These People

Mastering the law of attraction and the other 10 laws will allow you to craft a life in which success and opportunity appears to present itself to you in a similar way. Soon you will be the envy of your friends for your apparant good fortune.

Also included in the course are a bounty of bonuses, including a video seminar, an exclusive membership invitation and an entire bonus course focused on increasing your prosperity. I don’t have room in this post to discuss all the bonuses, so you’ll have to head over to the site to see them for yourself.

http://www.the11forgottenlaws.com/products/special/dollar-trial

Implementing The 11 Forgotten Laws is easy, and practical steps are suggested for you to start working on right away to:

• Attract happiness into your life

• Find new ways of creating wealth and prosperity

• Destroy doubt and anxiety and start to replace it with courage

• Develop an hunger for opportunities and start grabbing them now

‘The 11 Forgotten Laws’ is available to try for just $5/£3.

That’s right – for a limited time only, the 11 Forgotten Laws is available for a $5 one week trial. If you’re not completely happy with the product then you just need to send a quick email to the publisher and you will never be charged another penny and you can still keep all your bonuses! How’s that for a deal?

It’s risk free, and is yours to try for only $5/£3. That’s the tiny price of a Big Mac. If you’re ready to start taking control of you life and opening the floodgates for success, your journey begins NOW. £3 is nothing, visit the Forgotten Laws website now – you owe it to yourself to give it a try, as I did.

Take Action – Visit The 11 Forgotten Laws NOW by Clicking Below!

http://www.the11forgottenlaws.com/products/special/dollar-trial

To Your Success,

Simon Oates – Leadership Expert

Leadership Styles – Autocratic vs Democratic vs Bureaucratic

Research and investigation into different management leadership styles has been fragmented and inconsistent. The key to good leadership development is a good knowledgebase.  That’s why we bring you an in-depth look at 3 key leadership styles that will highlight the benefits and shortfalls commonly associated with each. These styles are autocratic, democratic and bureaucratic. But enough talking – lets get stuck in!

What is Autocratic Leadership?

Autocratic leadership is a classical leadership style with the following characteristics:

1. Manager seeks to make as many decisions as possible

2. Manager seeks to have the most authority and control in decision making

3. Manager seeks to retain responsibility rather than utilise complete delegation

4. Consultation with other colleagues in minimal and decision making becomes a solitary process

5. Managers are less concerned with investing their own leadership development, and prefer to simply work on the task at hand.

The autocratic leadership style is seen as an old fashioned technique. It has existed as long as managers have commanded subordinates, and is still employed by many leaders across the globe. The reason autocratic leadership survives, even if it is outdated, is because it is intuitive, carries instant benefits, and comes natural to many leaders. Many leaders who start pursuing leadership development are often trying to improve upon their organisations autocratic leadership style.

What Are The Benefits Of The Autocratic Leadership Style?

Despite having many critics, the autocratic leadership styles offer many advantages to managers who use them. These include:

Reduced stress due to increased control. Where the manager ultimately has significant legal and personal responsibility for a project, it will comfort them and reduce their stress levels to know that they have control over their fate.

A more productive group ‘while the leader is watching’. The oversight that an autocratic manager exerts over a team improves their working speed and makes them less likely to slack. This is ideal for poorly motivated employees who have little concern or interest in the quality or speed of work performed.

Improved logistics of operations. Having one leader with heavy involvement in many areas makes it more likely that problems are spotted in advance and deadlines met. This makes autocratic leadership ideal for one-off projects with tight deadlines, or complicated work environments where efficient cooperation is key to success.

Faster decision making. When only one person makes decisions with minimal consultation, decisions are made quicker, which will allow the management team to respond to changes in the business environment more quickly.

What Are The Disadvantages Of The Autocratic Leadership Style?

Short-termistic approach to management. While leading autocratically will enable faster decisions to be made in the short term, by robbing subordinates of the opportunity to gain experience and start on their own leadership development,  and learn from their mistakes, the manager is actually de-skilling their workforce which will lead to poorer decisions and productivity in the long run.

Manager perceived as having poor leadership skills. While the autocratic style has merits when used in certain environments (as highlighted below), autocratic leadership style is easy yet unpopular. Managers with poor leadership skills with often revert to this style by default.

Increased workload for the manager. By taking on as much responsibility and involvement as possible, an autocratic leader naturally works at their full capacity, which can lead to long term stress and health problems and could damage working relationships with colleagues. This hyper-focus on work comes at the expense of good leadership development.

People dislike being ordered around. They also dislike being shown very little trust and faith. As a result, the autocratic leadership style can result in a demotivated workforce. This results in the paradox that autocratic leadership styles are a good solution for demotivated workers, but in many cases, it is the leadership style alone that demotivates them in the first place. Generation Y employees particularly dislike this style.

Teams become dependent upon their leader. After becoming conditioned to receive orders and act upon them perfectly, workers lose initiative and the confidence to make decisions on their own. This results in teams of workers who become useless at running operations if they loose contact with their leader. This is the result of a lack of time dedicated to leadership development on the employees part.

When is the Autocratic Leadership Style Effective?

Following on from the merits and drawbacks listed above, the autocratic leadership style is useful in the following work situations:

1. Short term projects with a highly technical, complex or risky element.

2. Work environments where spans of control are wide and hence the manager has little time to devote to each employee.

3. Industries where employees need to perform low-skilled, monotonous and repetitive tasks and generally have low levels of motivation.

4. Projects where the work performed needs to be completed to exact specifications and/or with a tight deadline.

5. Companies that suffer from a high employee turnover, i.e. where time and resources devoted to leadership development would be largely wasted. Although one could argue that a lack of leadership development in the first place caused the high turnover.

What is Democratic Leadership?

Democratic Leadership is the leadership style that promotes the sharing of responsibility, the exercise of delegation and continual consultation. The style has the following characteristics: 1. Manager seeks consultation on all major issues and decisions. 2. Manager effectively delegate tasks to subordinates and give them full control and responsibility for those tasks. 3. Manager welcomes feedback on the results of intiatives and the work environment. 4. Manager encourages others to become leaders and be involved in leadership development.

What Are The Benefits Of The Democratic Leadership Style?

Positive work environment. A culture where junior employees are given fair amount of responsibility and are allowed to challenge themselves is one where employees are more enthused to work and enjoy what they do. Successful initiatives. The process of consultation and feedback naturally results in better decision making and more effective operations. Companies run under democratic leadership tend to run into fewer grave mistake and catastrophes. To put it simply – people tell a democratic leader when something is going badly wrong, while employees are encouraged to simply hide it from an autocrat. Creative thinking. The free flow of ideas and positive work environment is the perfect catalyst for creative thinking. To further their leadership education, people often check the online MBA rankings to see whether MBA online is a match for them. The benefits of this aren’t just relevant for creative industries, because creative thinking is required to solve problems in every single organisation, whatever it’s nature. Reduction of friction and office politics. By allowing subordinates to use their ideas and even more importantly – gain credit for them, you are neatly reducing the amount of tension employees generate with their manager. When autocratic leaders refuse to listen to their workers, or blatantly ignore their ideas, they are effectively asking for people to talk behind their back and attempt to undermine or supercede them. Reduced employee turnover. When employees feel empowered through leadership development, a company will experience lower rates of employee turnover which has numerous benefits. A company that invests in leadership development for its employees, is investing in their future, and this is appreciated by a large majority of the workforce.

What Are The Disadvantages Of The Democratic Leadership Style?

Lengthy and ‘boring’ decision making. Seeking consultation over every decision can lead to a process so slow that it can cause opportunities to be missed, or hazards avoided too late. Danger of pseudo participation. Many managers simply pretend to follow a democratic leadership style simply to score a point in the eyes of their subordinates. Employees are quick to realise when their ideas aren’t actually valued, and that the manager is merely following procedure in asking for suggestions, but never actually implementing them. In other words, they’re simply exerting autocratic leadership in disguise.

When Is The Democratic Leadership Style Effective?

Now you’ve heard about the benefits and drawbacks of this leadership style, let’s look at where its actually implemented in the business world. 1. Democratic leadership is applied to an extent in the manufacturing industry, to allow employees to give their ideas on how processes can become leaner and more efficient. While ‘Fordism’ is still applied in some factories across the country, truth is that production managers are now really starting to harness the motivational bonuses associated with not treating employees like robots anymore. 2. Democratic leadershp is effective in proffessional organisations where the emphasis is clearly on training, professional & leadership development and quality of work performed. Democratic procedures are simply just one cog in the effective leadership mechanisms firms like The Big Four have created over the years. 3. Non profit organisations also tremendously benefit from drawing upon the creative energies of all their staff to bring about cost cutting techniques or fund raising ideas. 4. As previously mentioned, creative industries such as advertising and television enjoy alot of benefits from the free flow of ideas that democratic leadership brings.

What Is Bureaucratic Leadership?

The bureaucratic leadership style is concerned with ensuring workers follow rules and procedures accurately and consistently. Bureaucratic leadership normally has the following characteristics: 1. Leaders expect a employees to display a formal, business-like attitude in the workplace and between each other. 2. Managers gain instant authority with their position, because rules demand that employees pay them certain priveledges, such as being able to sign off on all major decisions. As a result, leaders suffer from ‘position power’. Leadership development becomes pointless, because only titles and roles provide any real control or power. 3. Employees are rewarded for their ability to adhere to the rules and follow procedure perfectly. 4. Bureaucratic systems usually gradually develop over a long period of time, and hence are more commonly found in large & old businesses.

What Are The Benefits Of The Bureaucratic Leadership Style?

Increased safety. In dangerous workplaces where procedures save lives, a bureaucratic management style can help enforce health and safety rules. Quality work. Some tasks, such as completing proffessional work or medical examinations, need to be done in a meticulous fashion to be done correctly. Laziness can result in poor work, and hence one solution is to enforce the rules via the bureacratic leadership style. Ultimate control. An environment whereby employees are intrinsically motivated to follow rules in order to be promoted and succeed results in the tightest control management can ever assume over a company. This control can be used to cut costs or improve productivity.

What Are The Disadvantages Of The Bureaucratic Leadership Style?

Dehumanises the business. Bureacratic companies tend to remove as much potential for ‘human error’ out of the picture as possible. Unfortunately this also has the effect of removing all the enjoyment and reward that comes from deciding how to do a task and accomplishing it. Lack of self-fulfillment. The bureaucratic way of working hampers employees efforts to become successful and independent, because the system becomes too contraining. Parkinson’s Law. Cyril Northcote Parkinson made the scientific observation that the number of staff in bureaucracies increased by an average of 5%-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”". He explains this growth by two forces: (1) “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals” and (2) “Officials make work for each other.” Parkinson’s findings suggest that bureaucratic leadership encourages inefficiency and waste of internal resources in the long run. ‘Position power’ obessession. After working in an environment that reinforces the idea that authority is created by rules which in turn support senior positions. Employees become attached to the idea that simply being in a job position creates authority. This can lead to intense office politics, arrogant leaders and little incentive to perform well once an employee has landed a top job. Lack of creativity. It goes without saying that a rule-based culture hinders creativity and encourages workers to simply perform puppet-like work rather than think independently. This may result in a lack of growth in the business due to employees simply not thinking out of the box or looking for new areas to develop. Poor communication. A common feature of a bureaucratic system is a complicated network of communication lines. Managers who don’t want to be ‘bothered’ by junior staff simply create procedures that allow them to avoid communicating with those below them. ‘Go through the formal process’, ‘Talk to my secretary’ and ‘My schedule is full’ are common rule-based excuses for blocked contact. Barriers to communication can hinder the success of any company. For example, the board may be charging ahead with a doomed product simply because their shop floor workers cannot pass on the message that customers are giving very negative feedback.

When Is The Bureaucratic Leadership Style Effective?

Bureaucratic leadership is found in extremely large corporations such as General Electric, Daimler and General Motors. However these cultures have evolved due to the age and size of these companies, and are generally blamed for the slow growth and recent failures at these companies. 1. Governmental bodies often have bureaucratic systems, and while these are often despised by the public, they ensure accountability to the tax payer and fair treatment for all. Excessive form-filling also serves the purpose of passing effort from the government authority (with a tight budget) onto the individual, helping to save costs. 2. Dangerous workplaces such as mines, oil rigs, construction sites and film sets all benefit from the tight control over health and safety that rules offer.

What Different Leadership Types Are There?

These 3 key management leadership styles are by no means a comprehensive list. Different leadership styles include laissez faire leadership, where the leader sets tasks and leaves workers up to their own devices to complete it. To help you discover which leadership style you possess, try our new Leadership Style Questionnaire.

Leadership Development

Leadership development is a complicated area, and thus countless styles have been theorised and researched. Good leadership development often involves using resources such as Leadership Expert to be ‘sift’ through these different leadership development tips and ideas. Once you’ve been able to pull together a solid leadership development plan for yourself, you can start to really engage your employees – and maybe even set them off on their own leadership development quest!

Leadership Expert also has articles on another leadership style: charismatic leadership. You may also want to read our articles on leadership theories and common leadership traits.

Author – Simon Oates – Leadership Expert.

Leadership Model

There isn’t much doubt that most effective high impact leaders are driven by a model. This is true even when that effective leader doesn’t take the time to define his personal unique model. A model is a tool that leaders use to predict future outcomes of current decisions; a tool that not only enhances personal creativity but encourages creativity in the minds of their employees. An executive’s model is built from the sum of their experiences, knowledge, deeds and, in fact, many of their mistakes. Best practice alone will not get the job done. Effective model driven leadership utilizing best practice is a combination that is an absolute must. Different leaders create their models through different approaches. Each model is unique to the individual but the following three examples explain the platform that models are built on.

The Competitive Desire Model

Some leaders strongly shape their model by working in every aspect of the business and also from learning the business from the ground up. They always carry a strong desire to compete and win. The Leaders competitive instincts are generally tempered by personal humility and respect for the individual managers on his team. Listening skills and genuine interest in what is right for the business are key tools in building a consensus. Belief in the employees is a guiding principle in leadership style. This same approach is used with both suppliers and customers to find the innovative win-win solution. Make no mistake; this approach is very different than typical negotiation approaches used in many wholesaler-distributors.

It becomes a discipline. This discipline circumvents growth mistakes so common in the industry. The other implication of this model is providing significant autonomy to the executive team. The leader makes sure the executive team has a detailed and shared vision of the business objectives and goals. He believes his role as chief executive is to provide the shared vision and make sure that it is clear and also current.

The Elegant, Powerful Win-Win Innovation & Creativity Model

Another variation of the servant style of leadership models is the elegant, powerful, and simple model. This model starts with an open and clear balance between the various stakeholders whether they are customer/owners, employees, or suppliers. It is a truly win-win model without the destructive negotiation experienced by many other distributors. Using this foundation and a long established set of core corporate values and best practice the leader consistently reminds each stakeholder group of the key messages while continually focusing the organization on innovation and creativity. Innovation becomes a key strategic initiative for growth. It is exciting to see the accumulated economic power that can be developed by a constantly evolving innovative business model and effective leadership combined with best practice utilization.

The Strategic Shift Model

A third example of leadership modeling is about managing a strategic shift from being a traditional box-moving wholesaler with limited growth prospects to a logistics powerhouse that provides significant value in the supply chain.

Strategy is said to be obvious once you’ve had it explained. It is also said that customers don’t see strategy, they only see execution. This model like the other examples platform a strong sense of curiosity about other companies and how to apply lessons learned in their own organizations. The answers needed for major change and organizational renewal lie outside the enterprise and effective leaders using this model are able to take prior “lessons learned” and bench marking to generate success.

Over ninety percent of the reasons companies fail can be traced to ineffective leadership. It’s not because of the economy and it is not because of the competition. It is a failure to learn. Effective leadership will overcome these obstacles, and they’ll be looking down the road at what needs to be done to grow the current model once the model is no longer ‘grow-able. Attention is paid to the lessons learned.

What is a High Impact Leader?

High impact leaders, regardless of their personal model demonstrate a curiosity that can not be satisfied without personal examination of what exactly were the causes of any failure to meet expectations. Non-performance is just not acceptable. Leadership is a key in every instance to creating an attitude, structuring an environment and developing employees as the very essence of success. Although individual leadership models differ in some specific approaches the common thread that links every model together is respect for the individual employee and the willingness and ability to listen with an understanding that embellishes their own leadership contribution to the organization. Best practices are a part of every successful leadership model but best practice alone will not create the level of success demonstrated by the high impact upper quartile performers. Effective leaders create a culture where employees can express themselves and fight for what is right; employees become responsibly fanatical about aligning their resources to add value to the customer and the company. That’s what high impact leadership is all about.

Author:  Dr Eric Johnson – http://www.ceostrategist.com

Leadership Vision

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.“ John F Kennedy, Former American President.

President Kennedy’s landmark vision “Landing on the Moon” When President, Kennedy quoted the above in the year 1961, he surely believed that his nation should commit itself to achieve the goal, by the end of the decade; America would be able to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth. That statement and plan would only come from a visionary and great leader. And it exemplifies the type of leadership we expect from such great leaders. We want the leaders to motivate by setting unthinkably high aspirations; even though there may be tremendous uncertainties we should face in the future to attain the goal. Now we know that Kennedy’s visionary statement became a reality and the man landed on the moon and came back to earth unharmed, without such a vision, such a landmark goal should not have been a reality. His vision was bold that it should be done at any cost.

What is a Vision Statement? Before deciding whether we need a vision statement, we first of all to know what this vision statement is?. A vision is a statement written or unwritten statement, which is just like our ambition to become, say what we will become after 5 years. A leadership vision should stretch an individual’s capabilities and image of himself. It gives shape and direction to our future. Our personal vision statement provides the direction necessary to guide the course of our days and the choices we make about our future. Our personal vision statement is a torch shining in the darkness to illuminate our way. Now we understood about the vision statement, now write our personal vision statement as a first step in focusing our life – for our joy, our accomplishments, our contribution, our glory, and for our legacy.

One of the qualities that a person must have is the ability to envision the future. Vision might seem an exalted ambition compared with the harsh realities of the future. But without vision, growth and achieving goals becomes difficult. Vision helps simplify the decision-making process, as organizations need to make hundreds of decisions per day to simple stay afloat in this environment. Without a view of the big picture for the future, making even a small decision can appear as a mountain to be climbed.

Visions range in length from a couple of words to several pages, but normally people prefer shorter vision statements because they can remember their shorter visions. Our unit has a vision too; To be the most preferred supplier of quality product in category to result in sales revenue of more than Rs.1000 crore by FY 2010 .

Here there are two examples of vision statements, one is for an individual and another is for the purposes of organizational leadership;

•“In 2010, I will be a head of a profit center in an organization of good repute in India” (Individual) •”We will become a recognized and respected hotel chain in Asia in 3 years.” (Organization)

How we can prepare vision statement:

1. First identify the goals.

2. Uncover the real, human value in those goals.

3. Identify what you value most about you, your goals how and how you will achieve your goals.

4. Combine your values & goals and polish the words until you have a vision statement inspiring yourselves enough to energize and motivate you.

To build a vision of the future requires a lot of time and effort and successful people are those who can strike a balance between both, combining vision and execution. Vision is painting a picture of tomorrow’s world before you. It is about imagining a future day in your life? With the values and goals, which you are making and keeping in mind for the changing competitive environment of future. It is about thinking through painstaking and crafting come out with productive solutions. To build a vision of the future, one needs to come at it from various angles, because technology and competition do not stand still.

Why is vision so important? If an individual is in the initial stages of his career, it cannot compete and win over others; however it can think of it in long term, as at present the others have a far better edge over you. The individual needs to envision the future advantages and disadvantages that will come and build a leadership vision based on that situation. It may take time for these opportunities to manifest. The person needs enough resources and patience for the coming years to face the uncertainties. It is not easy because today’s pressures and deadlines will tend to take precedence. Organizations have to make sure vision is not sacrificed considering the present circumstances.

To be effective, a vision must motivate people. President Kennedy’s vision to let land the first man on the moon by the end of the 1960′s and it is one of the most famous examples of effective leadership vision. To motivate people, a vision might be expressed in arousing tones. The leadership vision to first land the first human on the moon would have been motivational to the engineers and scientists who made it happen no matter how the vision was expressed. It was motivational for two reasons: it gave them a very concrete, time-bounded target and it was an exciting challenge for the people associated with the project, that is too with the support of the most powerful man on the land.

If you own a car rental company, creating a motivational vision would be harder. It is very difficult to know how much you have to do to improve the customer service at lower costs. You have no idea what the customers expect from you, meaning you have to put in lots of effort such as conducting a surveys and evaluations, what the competitors are doing for their customers. If you are already in the top 3 in this industry, you have also to know how much higher can you go? In that case, the most motivational vision for such a business might be to make it to number one over the next 3 years. If your vision is not time-related, it is very difficult to get excited about it, mainly because there is no sense of urgency to do anything new, but your vision must be having the mettle that your company will be No.1 in 5 years, but this needs a lot of bravery, since just preparing a vision statement is not enough, you have to the daringness to go ahead with your vision statement and to achieve your goals within the time period, you decided for yourself.

It is said that visionary leadership motivates staff to overcome tough challenges and to achieve goals, however for this we need to decide whether we really need a vision. We are often told that vision is an essential feature of great leader, then in that context, we also need a vision to execute our plans well for achieving our personal goals and to become successful.

Our personal success depends on how well we define and live by the vision we prepared for ourselves.

Does Age Affect Your Leadership Potential?

Aging is a process that we must all navigate through in life. Even though its the only challenge that we must all face – it often feels like a terribly personal one, and is often a challenge that we face alone. As we grow older, our leadership skills change, but do they improve or worsen?

How getting older reduces our leadership skills.

Firstly I shall look at the side of the debate that puts forward the notion that as we grow older, our ability to lead others actually deteriorates. I investigate possible reasons below.

1. Our control over children deteriorates as we are seen as out-of-touch

2. Our authority in public becomes questioned for the first time, as issues of our cognitive ability and other physical consequences start to affect the perceived quality of our judgement.

3. As memory starts to slowly deteriorate, we become less on the ball and may fall behind in fast moving areas of life, resulting in us not being seen as a leader.

How aging increases our leadership skills.

1. Our age makes us automatically seem experienced and wise in the workplace. We have a better understanding of what can go wrong, and how plans can fall apart – so our guidance is appreciated by those who are attempting a project for the first time.

2. Our appearance causes others to take us seriously. While youthful individuals may have all the energy in the world, they struggle getting places because people simply don’t have the faith in them. Older people receive respect that reduces this risk.

3. Long-standing relationships with others mean that we have far more influence over these people than young strangers could ever have, (when taking love out of the equation anyway!).

4. Knowing thoroughly how the world works, and having experience in so many parts of life means that we become more confident as we age, and in many cases become tougher as a result of life’s toils. It’s a statistical fact that older people are more likely to fight back against muggers than young people are. I think this demonstrates more clearly than anything else – that older people have a great spirit that potential ‘followers’ see in them too.

5. As life starts to slow down, we are able to see the big picture of life. For teenagers, life all too often is simply about getting through school as fast as possible and drinking as much as they can. It’s fast paced and many individuals lose sight of what matters in life. With this perspective in mind, older people have a greater ability of appealing to the good side of people, and often take the time to do nice things that wins colleagues and subordinate’s respect.

I hope these thoughts help you make your own mind up about whether Leadership is something that comes naturally with age or not, and whether older people actually have an advantage over younger individuals when it comes to having leadership potential. In my opinion, it does. And this gives me just another reason to smile on my birthday. Add your thoughts below by leaving a comment!

Leadership Characteristics

Defining leadership characteristics is not simple. This is because each leader has his/her own characteristics. However there are some common features required for an exemplary leader. A typical leader should know how to influence their team members to work harder and committed to achieve the overall organizational goals. A leader can be either task oriented or people oriented. Task oriented leader will be interested in training, performance and in winning. Whereas people oriented leaders will concentrate more on inter personal relationships.

1. A leader must have the characteristics which he/she wants to incorporate into his/her team. Discipline, self confidence etc are the essential qualities of a leader. As he/she is the role model for the followers, his/her movement will be keenly watched by others. Therefore a leader must carefully behave in a way they wish to be emulated.

2. Leaders are not born and they are made by hard work. Hence hard work and intelligence are the important leadership characteristics. A leader must take decisions after analyzing each and every aspect of the situation and must be able to use common sense in accomplishing complex tasks. They must also know how to select right strategy to tackle the situation. Adaptability to various situations and willingness to accept changes are crucial to leadership success.

3. All excellent leaders regularly invest in themselves. Leaders have often sought out useful leadership books and learning material that will help them along the path to happiness and leadership. These days, many e-courses tend to be rather disappointing, but if you don’t like the idea of having to read through 30 leadership books then you should take a look at The Ultimate Leadership Guide . Its an excellent base upon which you can build your personal development – and contains the core teachings from 30 top leadership books. I use the electronic version which sits on my desktop, to constantly refresh these principles throughout my working week. Doing so multiplies the effectiveness of literature because being able to re-visit means you’re far more likely to remember infomation and find ways to apply it.

4. A good leader must be able to motivate his/her team members to get success. They must create task excitement and confidence in accomplishing a task. They must be easily approachable to his subordinates. A great leader is one who is a master in the art of communication. He/she must be ready to listen to the words of his/her team members. Two way communication is therefore essential in leadership.

4. A leader must be able to push the entire effort of his team members. They should have the capacity to use the full potentiality of the members. They must give opportunities to the team members to prove their leadership skills. A good leader should motivate his team people to use the opportunities correctly.

6. A great leader is one who guides a team and not rules the team. Providing a trusting and open environment to the team members is one of the crucial leadership characteristics. They should offer an environment to the team members where they can learn and grow. An excellent leader will have the strong sense of vision.

Apart from the above characteristics mentioned, a good leader must have the following characteristics:

7. Self esteem. Self esteem is an important quality of a leader which will help to face tough challenges.

8. Need to achieve. a leader must be goal oriented and must be able to strive hard to achieve the goals. Heshe should be ready to take risks. A good leader is one who takes moderate risks and not extreme risks.

8. Screening for opportunity. A leader must have the ability to screen the opportunities as useful and useless. They must also be able to grasp any small opportunity missed by their competitors.

9. Optimism. A good leader must be an optimist. They should be able to see problems as challenges. A great leader will always view an obstacle as a way to new direction.

10. Courage. An outstanding leader is one who has courage to face challenges. Risk-taking is a crucial characteristic of a leader. They must be able to make changes and to accept changes.

Leadership Training

Welcome to Leadership Expert’s page on Leadership Training.

What is leadership training about? Is leadership training effective? These will be the questions I will be investigating, evaluating and more importantly – solving.

The industry for training indviduals in business or on a personal level to develop their leadership. Training is a rather clinical word, and leadership is a very hard to define subject. Do the two really mix well?

Well, leadership coaches are commonplace in society and are generally being accepted in organisations and as part of peoples schedules.  The leadership training that these coaches offer generally falls into two catergories. Either they’re the masters of oratory that give inspiring speeches and are great for temporarily enthusing staff – or they’re the type that focus on processes and attitudes in the workplace, and suggest practical and effective tweaks to behaviours to help improve leadership in the company.

From visiting organisations, I’ve found that the happiest employees and managers regularly invest in themselves and their personal leadership training. People have often sought out useful leadership books and learning material that will help them along the path to happiness and leadership. These days, many e-courses tend to be rather disappointing, but I’m pleased to recommend one e-course that is still respected by leadership professionals such as myself: The 11 Forgotten Laws. It’s generally seen as an essential and core ‘crash course’ in the laws and secrets you need to know to further your leadership & career and even help find happiness in other areas of your life. Its an excellent base upon which you can build your personal development.

Feedforward Leadership – Better than Feedback?

Providing feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is in line with what their leaders expect. They need to learn what they have done well and what they need to change. Traditionally, this information has been communicated in the form of “downward feedback” from leaders to their employees. Just as employees need feedback from leaders, leaders can benefit from feedback from their employees. Employees can provide useful input on the effectiveness of procedures and processes and as well as input to managers on their leadership effectiveness. This “upward feedback” has become increasingly common with the advent of 360 degree multi-rater assessments.

But there is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on a past, on what has already occurred – not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.

Over the past several years, I have observed more than ten thousand leaders as they participated in a fascinating experiential exercise. In the exercise, participants are each asked to play two roles. In one role, they are asked provide feedforward – that is, to give someone else suggestions for the future and help as much as they can. In the second role, they are asked to accept feedforward – that is, to listen to the suggestions for the future and learn as much as they can. The exercise typically lasts for 10-15 minutes, and the average participant has 6-7 dialogue sessions. In the exercise participants are asked to:

- Pick one behavior that they would like to change. Change in this behavior should make a significant, positive difference in their lives.

- Describe this behavior to randomly selected fellow participants. This is done in one-on-one dialogues. It can be done quite simply, such as, “I want to be a better listener.”

- Ask for feedforward – for two suggestions for the future that might help them achieve a positive change in their selected behavior. If participants have worked together in the past, they are not allowed to give ANY feedback about the past. They are only allowed to give ideas for the future.

- Listen attentively to the suggestions and take notes. Participants are not allowed to comment on the suggestions in any way. They are not allowed to critique the suggestions or even to make positive judgmental statements, such as, “That’s a good idea.”

- Thank the other participants for their suggestions.

- Ask the other persons what they would like to change.

- Provide feedforward – two suggestions aimed at helping the other person change.

- Say, “You are welcome.” when thanked for the suggestions. The entire process of both giving and receiving feedforward usually takes about two minutes.

- Find another participant and keep repeating the process until the exercise is stopped.

When the exercise is finished, I ask participants to provide one word that best describes their reaction to this experience. I ask them to complete the sentence, “This exercise was…”. The words provided are almost always extremely positive, such as “great”, “energizing”, “useful” or “helpful.” The most common word mentioned is “fun!”

What is the last word that most of us think about when we receive feedback, coaching and developmental ideas? Fun!

Eleven Reasons to Try FeedForward

Participants are then asked why this exercise is seen as fun and helpful as opposed to painful, embarrassing or uncomfortable. Their answers provide a great explanation of why feedforward can often be more useful than feedback as a developmental tool.

1. We can change the future. We can’t change the past. Feedforward helps people envision and focus on a positive future, not a failed past. Athletes are often trained using feedforward. Racecar drivers are taught to, “Look at the road ahead, not at the wall.” Basketball players are taught to envision the ball going in the hoop and to imagine the perfect shot. By giving people ideas on how they can be even more successful, we can increase their chances of achieving this success in the future.

2. It can be more productive to help people be “right,” than prove they were “wrong.” Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in “let me prove you were wrong.” This tends to produce defensiveness on the part of the receiver and discomfort on the part of the sender. Even constructively delivered feedback is often seen as negative as it necessarily involves a discussion of mistakes, shortfalls, and problems. Feedforward, on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it focuses on solutions – not problems.

3. Feedforward is especially suited to successful people. Successful people like getting ideas that are aimed at helping them achieve their goals. They tend to resist negative judgment. We all tend to accept feedback that is consistent with the way we see ourselves. We also tend to reject or deny feedback that is inconsistent with the way we see ourselves. Successful people tend to have a very positive self-image. I have observed many successful executives respond to (and even enjoy) feedforward. I am not sure that these same people would have had such a positive reaction to feedback.

4. Feedforward can come from anyone who knows about the task. It does not require personal experience with the individual. One very common positive reaction to the previously described exercise is that participants are amazed by how much they can learn from people that they don’t know! For example, if you want to be a better listener, almost any fellow leader can give you ideas on how you can improve. They don’t have to know you. Feedback requires knowing about the person. Feedforward just requires having good ideas for achieving the task.

5. People do not take feedforward as personally as feedback. In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to “focus on the performance, not the person”. In practice, almost all feedback is taken personally (no matter how it is delivered). Successful people’s sense of identity is highly connected with their work. The more successful people are, the more this tends to be true. It is hard to give a dedicated professional feedback that is not taken personally. Feedforward cannot involve a personal critique, since it is discussing something that has not yet happened! Positive suggestions tend to be seen as objective advice – personal critiques are often viewed as personal attacks.

6. Feedback can reinforce personal stereotyping and negative self-fulfilling prophecies. Feedforward can reinforce the possibility of change. Feedback can reinforce the feeling of failure. How many of us have been “helped” by a spouse, significant other or friend, who seems to have a near-photographic memory of our previous “sins” that they share with us in order to point out the history of our shortcomings. Negative feedback can be used to reinforce the message, “this is just the way you are”. Feedforward is based on the assumption that the receiver of suggestions can make positive changes in the future.

7. Face it! Most of us hate getting negative feedback, and we don’t like to give it. I have reviewed summary 360 feedback reports for over 50 companies. The items, “provides developmental feedback in a timely manner” and “encourages and accepts constructive criticism” almost always score near the bottom on co-worker satisfaction with leaders. Traditional training does not seem to make a great deal of difference. If leaders got better at providing feedback every time the performance appraisal forms were “improved”, most should be perfect by now! Leaders are not very good at giving or receiving negative feedback. It is unlikely that this will change in the near future.

8. Feedforward can cover almost all of the same “material” as feedback. Imagine that you have just made a terrible presentation in front of the executive committee. Your manager is in the room. Rather than make you “relive” this humiliating experience, your manager might help you prepare for future presentations by giving you suggestions for the future. These suggestions can be very specific and still delivered in a positive way. In this way your manager can “cover the same points” without feeling embarrassed and without making you feel even more humiliated.

9. Feedforward tends to be much faster and more efficient than feedback. An excellent technique for giving ideas to successful people is to say, “Here are four ideas for the future. Please accept these in the positive spirit that they are given. If you can only use two of the ideas, you are still two ahead. Just ignore what doesn’t make sense for you.” With this approach almost no time gets wasted on judging the quality of the ideas or “proving that the ideas are wrong”. This “debate” time is usually negative; it can take up a lot of time, and it is often not very productive. By eliminating judgment of the ideas, the process becomes much more positive for the sender, as well as the receiver. Successful people tend to have a high need for self-determination and will tend to accept ideas that they “buy” while rejecting ideas that feel “forced” upon them.

10. Feedforward can be a useful tool to apply with managers, peers and team members. Rightly or wrongly, feedback is associated with judgment. This can lead to very negative – or even career-limiting – unintended consequences when applied to managers or peers. Feedforward does not imply superiority of judgment. It is more focused on being a helpful “fellow traveler” than an “expert”. As such it can be easier to hear from a person who is not in a position of power or authority. An excellent team building exercise is to have each team member ask, “How can I better help our team in the future?” and listen to feedforward from fellow team members (in one-on-one dialogues.)

11. People tend to listen more attentively to feedforward than feedback. One participant is the feedforward exercise noted, “I think that I listened more effectively in this exercise than I ever do at work!” When asked why, he responded, “Normally, when others are speaking, I am so busy composing a reply that will make sure that I sound smart – that I am not fully listening to what the other person is saying. In feedforward the only reply that I am allowed to make is ‘thank you’. Since I don’t have to worry about composing a clever reply – I can focus all of my energy on listening to the other person!”

In summary, the intent of this article is not to imply that leaders should never give feedback or that performance appraisals should be abandoned. The intent is to show how feedforward can often be preferable to feedback in day-to-day interactions. Aside from its effectiveness and efficiency, feedforward can make life a lot more enjoyable. When managers are asked, “How did you feel the last time you received feedback?” their most common responses are very negative. When managers are asked how they felt after receiving feedforward, they reply that feedforward was not only useful, it was also fun!

Quality communication – between and among people at all levels and every department and division – is the glue that holds organizations together. By using feedforward – and by encouraging others to use it – leaders can dramatically improve the quality of communication in their organizations, ensuring that the right message is conveyed, and that those who receive it are receptive to its content. The result is a much more dynamic, much more open organization – one whose employees focus on the promise of the future rather than dwelling on the mistakes of the past.

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