Leadership, like class, is hard to define, but easy to spot.Someone once defined management as the effective coordination of
efforts of individuals in a group to accomplish that stated objectives of organization. Managers get results by establishing goals and working with and through people to achieve those goals.
As a manager, your success depends on your ability to:
Find and attract career-oriented men and women who have knowledge, skills and attitudes to do job, who are motivated to work, and who will cooperate with you and each other, and;
Develop and manage these people to meet specific performance standards.
Management is a process because it involves a series of skills. But management is as much attitude as it is skills. Managers should be helpful supporters, working to build trust and confidence, and seeking to improve performance by recognizing that individuals have different needs, motivations and aspirations.
That means, more of a leader you are, better manager you will be.
Happily, most leaders are made, not born. They are cultivated, shaped and strengthened by education, training and real-world experience. Understanding leadership AND management is a good way of becoming more proficient at both.
What is leadership? What does it take to be a leader? Here's a short course: Leadership means having a mission and inspiring others to be committed to it. The mission is everything; leaders approach it with enthusiasm.
Leaders are agents of change; they make decisions based on a vision of future, not just on established directions.
Leaders take risks to make things happen that would not otherwise happen.
Leaders need a combination of competence, integrity, credibility and authority. They're seen as being involved in a lot of things and able to answer a lot of questions.
Leadership is a collaborative, not individual, process. It's ability to get people to do what you want them to because they want to do it!
Leaders help people do their best.
Leaders depend on themselves and act on their own authority, but they recognize importance of others.
Leaders ask questions and know how to listen.
Leaders let others talk; they don't talk about themselves.
Leadership begins when people disagree.
Leaders recognize that performance and progress are forged on anvil of constructive conflict.
Leaders are willing to be unloved! In words of Admiral John S. McCain (the late father of Senator): People may not love you for being strong when you have to be, but they will respect you for it and learn to behave themselves when you do. Try it; it works!
