subject: Leadership Notes [print this page] Leadership Notes Leadership Notes
Leadership Tips
To be reasonably effective it is not enough for the individual to work hard or to be knowledgeable. Effectiveness is something separate, something exclusive. But to be effective also does not require special gifts, special aptitude, or special training. Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain and fairly simple things. It consists of a small number of practices .
All the effective ones (executives I have met in forty-five years of work) have had to learn to be effective. And all of them have had to practice effectiveness until it became a habit.
- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive (1999)
The aim of leadership is to help others to achieve their personal bests. This involves setting high but realistic performance goals for yourself and your staff, finding ways to improve operations and procedures, and striving for total quality in all areas.
Ensure that you involve all staff members in quality-improving programs.
Promotion to leadership positions used to depend on rising up the company hierarchy. Now, vital work is increasingly carried out by temporary teams working on specific projects, which provide ideal opportunities for learning leadership skills.
Use projects as a way of learning more about other disciplines.
Make friends with people in different departments, and get to know how they operate.
- Robert Heller, Learning to Lead (19990
A good leader is first a good subordinate.A leader must be decisive his decisions a fulfillment of his duty, vision, and experience.
A leader is humble. He guards against ego distorting his vision.
A leader focuses his subordinates on their common goal and inspires them by his own devotion to achieving it.
A leader orders hard work and enforces necessary discipline but doesn't suffocate his subordinates' initiative or spirit.
- H.W. Crocker III, Robert E. Lee on Leadership (2000)
