Leadership starts from within

The global recession, directly or indirectly, will affect leadership: yours, your market, your competition, your region and, yes, your nation. Why?

Because leadership is ubiquitous. It is all around us. It is of primary importance. Yet it is seemingly neglected, undervalued, and under-resourced. Do you need any proof?

According to Development Dimensions International’s 2008/09 Global Leadership Forecast (1) from research of 1,493 HR professionals and 12,208 business leaders in 76 countries:

• 75% of business leaders identified improving or harnessing leadership talent as their number one priority.
• Only 41% of business leaders are satisfied with the help they receive to develop their leadership skills.
• One of the core needs within organizations is to create a sustainable supply of quality leaders.
• The main skill deficiency among organizations is in leadership skills and interpersonal skills.

Leadership is a bucket that runs away. Every organization, large and small, from the family to the local sports team, the government and the boardroom of a leading global company, will at some point need to replace leaders. This arises out of necessity and / or due to natural wear and tear. From the information above, it is clear that there is a widespread problem or, on a more positive note, there is an opportunity – an opportunity to address this chronic deficiency. How?

Start with yourself. Leadership starts from the inside.

Perspectives

Definition

To begin exploring this important distinction, let’s start by looking at the definition of leadership. oxford dictionary leadership is the action of leading a group of people or an organization, or the ability to do so.

Y …

Leading is making (a person or an animal) go with you by holding your hand, a halter, a rope, etc. while moving forward.

Therefore, leadership requires influence, direction, and action. However, for leadership to manifest itself in a way for others to follow, it stands to reason that the leader, whoever he may be, must first influence himself, give self-direction, and act in that direction.

Chronic question

There is a perennial question about leadership: “Are leaders born or made?” or to paraphrase “Nature versus nurture”.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Do you see a lot of babies leading the Fortune 500 or governments or the local sports team? Regardless of your opinion or perceptions, one thing is for sure. Leadership is something you grow into. Importantly, we were all born to lead ourselves at least.

In nature there must be reasonably synchronous growth regardless of the “ecosystem”. Teens can experience growing pains when their bones grow at a faster rate than their muscles. Our DNA is programmed so that eventually growth levels off and all systems are aligned and developed to your full design specification.

An individual promoted to a new role in an organization may experience a skills, attitudes and / or abilities gap compared to the new demands. To address the gap or deficit, the same individual must first look within and begin the process of change there.

It is true that in organizations it is also possible to experience growing pains: sales and demand exceed the capacity of supply and / or customer service. Therefore, leadership must be developed within the organization to address the imbalance and ensure that harmony is restored.

What does Google have to say?

Since Google is the number one search engine, it offers an unbiased and objective perspective on leadership.

Just by typing “leadership” you get 118 million results: sites, referrals, etc. According to Google, AdWords searches on the word “leadership” receive> 4 million visits per month worldwide. Both facts suggest that leadership is a topic of great interest and that there is an enormous diversity of data, opinions, perceptions, models, styles, concepts and experts. The monthly searches also suggest that there is a perpetual search for answers, solutions, and leadership information.

Interestingly, when the global search is narrowed, there is only:

• 4400 visits per month for “successful leadership”
• 33,100 visits per month for “effective leadership” and
• 18,100 visits per month for “self-leadership”.

Interestingly, in the face of all the leadership need out there, the refined quest for successful and effective leadership globally yields comparatively few successes. Why is that? Is there a global illusion that we just need to know more about leadership or just understand it better rather than defining what it takes to be a good or even great leader or to establish an outstanding leadership legacy?

People: your most important asset

The mantra that people are your greatest asset is spoken all over the world. Too bad the mantra is wrong.

People are not your most important asset. the right people are. And that’s especially true for the right leaders. The right leaders will attract, inspire, develop, and retain the right people. The right leaders will be determined to grow other leaders. The right leaders will start by growing themselves, from the inside out. They know that to be a great leader they must establish their own solid foundation of principles, values, and attitudes.

However, a skills-based approach to leadership takes an outside-in approach. That is where many individuals, teams and organizations go wrong and contribute significantly to the statistics of the World Leadership Forecast 2008/9. A skills approach to leadership assumes that a good foundation has been established on which to build skills. Completely ignoring the exam and establishing the proper foundation is a great risk. Unfortunately, whether assumptions have been made or the matter ignored altogether, this often amounts, effectively, to the ability to pitch on Teflon. The result is that the skills will not be maintained.

Applying the skills-based approach, consider a formula for success, here applied to leadership, such as Be x Do = Have. Have = good correct leadership. Do = skills. Be =? Without addressing “being,” it is no wonder that leadership is chronically deficient.

You get the people you deserve. It’s your decision. To attract and lead better people, you must become the leader that those people need and want. That means you must first invest in yourself.

Where to start

Most leaders must know and understand that people are the cornerstone of their team and / or organization. But to be an effective leader, you need to know the basic component of your people: their respective roles.

Many organizations simply look at their people in their professional capacity. While they may invest in their development and strive to lead them, they often miss the mark. To ensure that your leadership “fits in” and attracts the right people who are doing the right thing to generate the right results, you need to make sure you take into account all the roles each person gets to work with, inside and outside of the team or organization. . This means you need to address your personal roles outside of work, for example, parent, spouse, charity volunteer, captain of the local hockey team, and coach of your daughter’s swim team (5 roles).

All the roles of a person appear at work. A leader is no different. They have so many roles, if not more. The right leader will see to your growth and development in each role according to priorities and available “resources” (time, money, etc.).

Therefore, self-leadership begins by identifying the core roles, prioritizing them, planning their development, and then acting on the plan. To do all of that, you must start from the inside.

Relations

Interestingly, a leader will draw into their lives people and circumstances from which to learn and grow. Life is, after all, a mirror. The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of your relationships.

There are two often-quoted adages: love your neighbor as yourself and treat others as you would like to be treated. They both emphasize the importance of meaningful relationships and emphasize that all relationships start with you.

So leadership begins with your relationship with yourself. To improve your relationships with others so that you can become a better leader, you must first improve your relationship with yourself. Sadly, this revelation is often overlooked and / or not given the attention it deserves.

A critical ingredient

Any relationship begins with you. Leadership starts with you. Self-leadership (and any leadership for that matter), to be effective, depends on the ability to communicate well, both internally and externally. There is a lot of emphasis on external communication. For example, in all school systems around the world there is an emphasis on training around the messages from our mouth and from our pencil or keyboard. However, what has been sadly overlooked is the greater importance of our internal communication.

All communication begins as a thought before being translated into words and messages. How many of us have allowed ourselves to “speak first and think later”? Which it was the result? In many cases, it probably created some unwanted ripples in your life and leadership.

We all have an internal voice, we actually have two, our internal ally or our internal adversary. Our ally works for us. Our adversary is working against us. As a leader, which voice is louder most often or which do you listen to the most? When the adversary prevails, it is often because we are reacting to a situation or challenge. Self-leadership knows how to proactively and consciously control the voice it hears.

With self-leadership, our internal (and external) communication must be open, honest, clear, timely, and sometimes radical. Integrity then flows from this. When our thoughts align with our words, our actions will remain aligned. We are congruent. We talk to us. When we do that, people do what people see. His self-leadership then flows into leadership.

Farewell questions

To help you start your self-leadership, here are some extremely helpful questions to consider:

1. What is the detailed profile of the ideal leader for you, your team or your organization?
2. What are the foundations of self-leadership?
3. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is poor and 10 is excellent), how do you rate your self-leadership?
4. In case you didn’t get a 10 for n. 3, what should you be and / or do to improve your score to an 8+?
5. How do you encourage and develop self-leadership individually and / or as a team or organization?
6. Where appropriate, how will you integrate self-leadership into your existing leadership development?

Resume:

There is a global need for leadership, there always will be. The important distinction is the need for great leadership. Great leaders lead themselves well first. But before they get great, they know they have to. Doing so means that they must first invest in themselves and start developing from the inside out on a role-by-role basis. Ultimately, the quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of your relationships, which are determined by the quality of your internal or personal communication.

Leadership brings change. Change is inevitable; growth is optional. Therefore, to grow as a leader, whether as an individual, team, or organization, you must change. That change must start with you. Leadership starts from within you.