subject: Becoming A Great Leader- Leadership For Managers [print this page] Leadership Leadership
Leadership is a skill that many believe you can be born into. The past has produced some great leaders and some great events of people being lead to success or to victory. Leadership can be learnt and can assist you in your workplace or personal life. This article will provide more information on how leadership can make a difference.
What's in a great leader?
If you ask a random selection of passers by what makes a great leader, you will probably receive a wide selection of answers. However, there are some qualities that are universal to all great leaders, and by taking note of these essential skills, you can learn to be someone whom other people respect and look up to, both at work and in your personal life.
Leadership requires Strategic thinkers. To plan ahead and organise the steps to be taken way ahead of time is a good thing to do as you can avoid problems and situations. You wouldn't want to lead people into the path of trouble so planning and strategic thinking is a vital element of leadership.
Passionate people inspire people. Believing in your cause and having a vision is important. Being passionate will help leaders be persuasive and influential. Their words are influenced with passion to create and convey a compelling story or reason for action. People need to become motivated and how could you do this with a monotone and downward emotion. Having a vision is what drives people forward.
Be a great manager. This might seem obvious, but it is a skill that is often overlooked by many people. If you fail to manage your team well, no matter how inspirational your vision is, you are doomed to failure. Good management is all about managing the numbers: knowing how many people it takes to achieve a task, what the costs are, how much revenue was earned, etc. Genghis Khan was a great leader. Imagine how different the history books might have been if he has miscalculated how many men it would take to conquer Southeast Asia?
A good leader has good followers. Where do you think many great leaders would be today if they never had the followers to follow them? Allocate tasks to other followers and involve the group. By doing this you share the responsibility and also the group will feel empowered to trust you. Have some great team leaders to help reinforce your vision. What happens when you're not there? Having great team leaders will help you and your team.
Keep your team happy and you will have greater success. With a happy team followers are more likely to follow you and also support you. Reward your followers and look after them. They will in return look after you.
Communication. Leadership revolves around excellent communication. Many managers think they can manage from a distance. They leave their employees to get on with the job and only appear when things begin to go wrong. However, this is not the mark of a great leader. Leadership is about maintaining regular communication about all aspects of the employee's job. From discussing planned changes to relaying details about expected future performance, a great leader is always communicating. However, shouting angrily across the boardroom probably does not count.
Let your team know when they have reached a milestone. By completing smaller tasks they will be motivated to continue on. Overall the large tasks can be broken up into smaller ones to make the group feel easier to succeed and move forward. Feedback is an important part of Leadership.
Being a humours leader can add credibility and reputation. Careful how you use it though as it can also take it away if misused. Being charismatic will help others want to follow you also. Learn how to become personable and build rapport.
Genghis Khan was a great leader for many reasons, not least his propensity for quashing rebellion with genocide, but if he had failed to unite the Mongol tribes, he would never have been able to conquer great swathes of Eurasia and China. Whilst decimating your rivals in interesting ways is probably not recommended as good business practice, the underlying principles of his leadership are still applicable today.
