Monthly Archives: October 2014

The Five Levels of Leadership

  By admin | October 30, 2014 - 5:40 pm | 5 Levels
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For those who have not read John C. Maxwell, I would suggest you read “The 5 Levels of Leadership”. John’s book is very helpful for those new leaders to understand their leadership journey, and for those experienced leaders to understand where they are on their leadership journey.

John goes into great detail for each of the levels, with excellent examples to help the reader understand what it takes.

The levels as John has mapped it out are:

Level 1 – Position Leader
People follow you because they have to.

Level 2 – Permission Leader
People follow you because they want to.

Level 3 – Production Leader
People follow you because of what you have done for your organisation, or what you have produced.

Level 4 – People Development Leader
People follow you because of what you have done for them.

Level 5 – Pinnacle Leader
People follow you because of who you are and what you represent.

Change!

  By admin | October 30, 2014 - 5:15 pm | learning
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Do you know how many times Google changes its algorithm in a year?  Up to 600.

Amazon changes its prices 2.5 million times a day.

Walmart changes its prices 50,000 times a month.

The newsfeed algorithm on Facebook changed 100 times a year for the first 4 years.

Why? Because these organisations are continually learning. They know they must learn and change, or die and become irrelevant; or worst still become an MBA case study!

You don’t have to change yourself or your leadership approach as often as the above organisations, but you do have to realise what worked yesterday, or this morning, make not work ever again. You must learn, adapt, change all of the time. Leadership will never be a set of predetermined skills, but it is an attitude and a set of principles to deal with people.

Leader’s Products

  By admin | October 20, 2014 - 2:05 pm | organisations
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Have you ever wondered what are the products of the military or an army? Especially in peace time? Keeping the peace, reducing unemployment, training young people in a trade, possibly a university degree.

If you really think about, the real product of the military is to produce leaders, people who can lead in all manner of situations, from crisis to mundane, but people who can garner respect from a group of individuals to get a job done. I will admit, sometimes they miss the mark, and some of their product is not the best. There have been some major failures, but there have been also some amazing stars. What the military does is continue to learn, continue to invest to make the development of their leaders better, because if they didn’t peace time militaries would not exist.

Think about how leadership works in the military, leadership is taught at all levels. In a battle scenario, the leader falls in the heat of battle, the next leader in the hierarchy steps up to take the leadership role and is willingly accepted by the team, this can occur at multiple levels and multiple times. Think about your own organisation, what would happen if some of your leaders were suddenly not there or unavailable, would anyone step up? Could anyone step up?

This is part of setting up a leadership culture within your organisation. Firstly, recognising the importance of leadership in your organisation; secondly, developing it; thirdly, promoting it.

Leader’s Toolbox

  By admin | October 20, 2014 - 1:47 pm | toolbox
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Is sarcasm part of your leadership toolbox?

The word comes from the Greek σαρκασμός (sarkasmos) which is taken from σαρκάζειν meaning “to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer” [OED]. Wow, is this the way a true leader ought to behave? In other words, sarcasm is destructive. If you are leading a team why would you want to undermine yourself by pulling it apart through the use of sarcasm. Remember, if you employ sarcasm in your team, you are leading by example, that means your teams are most likely to be using sarcasm too. Continue using sarcasm and soon your teams will begin to naturally fall apart, what choice do they really have?

Be aware of yourself, the way you interact with your teams, sometimes you can learn more from observing yourself rather than observing others. Reflection is very powerful!

Don’t

  By admin | October 18, 2014 - 11:32 am | Uncategorized
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Don’t what?

If you think of yourself as a leader, don’t be a manager. As a leader you need to support and encourage your followers to come with you on your journey and where they want to be. A manager conjures up the image of a boss coercing, forcing, ordering the team to achieve “the goals”, leader has the team willingly achieve & exceed “their goals”.

Can you learn to be a leader?

  By admin | October 14, 2014 - 3:19 am | Uncategorized
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Every person who has pursued an interest in leadership has wrestled with this question. The answer is simple, those who appear to be born leaders have just started learning much earlier than the rest. Those who excel in the area of leadership, keep on learning, just as a top class golfer can be found on the putting green or driving range. An excellent leader is learning, practicing, observing all the time. Leadership is a commitment to continually learn and improve.

Leaders are readers…