Effective Leaders

Author: Richard Howard

Purpose

To provide a basic overview on

•       Defining Leadership

•       Difference between Management and Leadership

•       Leadership Styles

•       Leadership Challenges

•       How to become an Effective Leader

•       Rick’s Key Points on Leadership

At the end of this module you will be able understand the major styles of leadership, and learn the basic principles of becoming an Effective Leader.

The Definition of Leadership

The action of leading a group of people or an organization

Different styles of leadership

  1. the action of leading a group of people or an organization.
     "different styles of leadership“

2.  the state or position of being a leader.   "the leadership of the party"

Leadership versus Management

Manager

• Maintains
• Focuses on systems and structure
• Relies on control
• Has a short-range view
• Asks how and when
• Has his or her eye always on the bottom line
• Imitates
• Accepts the status quo
• The classic good soldier
• Does things right

Leader

• Develops
• Focuses on people
• Inspires trust
• Has a long-range perspective
• Asks what and why
• Leader’s eye is on the horizon
• Originates
• Challenges it
• His or her own person
• Does the right thing.

Leadership and management work hand in hand, both are critical to the success of a effective organization. The manager’s job is to plan, organize and coordinate. The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate.

Leadership Styles

Coaching

This one-on-one style focuses on developing individuals, showing them how to improve their performance, and helping to connect their goals to the goals of the organization. Coaching works best with employees who show initiative and want more professional development.

Affiliative

This style emphasizes the importance of team work, and creates harmony in a group by connecting people to each other. It's particular valuable when you need to improve team harmony, increase morale, and repair communication or repair broken trust in an organization.

Coercive/Commanding

This is the classic model of "military" style leadership – probably the most often used, but the least often effective.

Pacesetting

In this style, the leader sets high standards for performance. He or she is obsessive about doing things better and faster, and asks the same of everyone. But Goleman warns this style should be used sparingly, because it can undercut morale and make people feel as if they are failing.

Democratic

This style draws on people's knowledge and skills, and creates a group commitment to the resulting goals. It works best when the direction the organization should take is unclear, and the leader needs to tap the collective wisdom of the group.

Visionary

This style is most appropriate when an organization needs a new direction. Its goal is to move people towards a new set of shared dreams. 

Style

Commanding/
Coercive

Visionary/
Authoritative

Affiliative

Democratic

Pacesetting

Coaching

Description

Dictatorship-"Do what I say"
 

Mobilizes people towards a vision
 

Focuses on emotional needs over work needs

Uses participation, listening to both the bad and the good news

Builds challenging and exciting goals for people

Connecting corporate goals whilst helping people find strengths and weakness, linking these to career aspirations and actions

When to use it

In urgency-when time is scare, and in crisis

When a new vision and direction is needed

Best used for healing rifts and getting through stressful situations

To gain valuable input from employees and to gain Buy-in, when there is time to do so

When the team is already highly motivated and competent

Coach, mentor and develop individuals when they need to build longer term strengths

Weakness

Members can feel stifled as they are treated as workers and not asked for an option

Lacks the ability to help team members understand how they get to a vision or goal

Confrontation and emotionally distressing positions can be avoided

Can be lots of listening but very little effective action

Can lack emotional intelligence

Can come across as micromanaging

Leadership Challenges

Being a leader is in itself a challenge. The challenges of leadership are really of three kinds

1. External Challenges

• Public criticism
  Especially uninformed criticism, of your group or mission.
• Flare-ups of others' interpersonal issues
  Either within the group or outside it.
• Crises
  Which could be tied to finances, program, politics, public relations (scandals), legal concerns 
• Disasters
  These are different from crises
• Opposition and/or hostility from powerful forces
  Business groups, local government
• Collaboration
  With another group or organization may call upon a leader to define clearly the boundaries

***How to cope with External Challenges

• Be proactive
  Regardless of the situation, it's important for leaders to do something
• Be creative
  Try to think "outside the box," i.e. in unexpected but effective ways.
• Face conflict squarely
  This doesn't mean come out fighting, but rather identify and acknowledge the conflict, and work to resolve it.
• Always look for common ground
  If there's opposition to what you're doing, it may only be to one specific part of it, or may be based on misunderstanding
• Look for opportunities to collaborate
  This is important both within and outside your group or organization. Involve as many people as possible in decisions

2. Internal Challenges

• Insecurity
  Many people feel, at least some of the time, that they're not up to the tasks they face.
• Defensiveness
  Also born of insecurity, defensiveness shows up most often as an inability to take criticism. 
• Lack of decisiveness
  Sometimes it's hard to make a decision. 
• Inability to be direct when there's a problem
  Many people want so badly to be liked, or are so afraid of hurting others, that they find it difficult to say anything negative.
• Impatience - with others and with situations
  It may seem, given the importance of decisiveness and firmness, that patience is not a virtue a leader needs. In fact, it is perhaps the most important trait to develop.

***How to cope with Internal Challenges

• Listen
  Listen to people's responses to your ideas, plans, and opinions. Listen more than you talk. Listen to a broad range of people, not just to those who agree with you. Probe to find out why they think or feel the way they do. Assume that everyone has something important to say.
• Ask for 360-degree feedback and use it
  This is feedback (people's views of you) from everyone around you - staff, volunteers, Board, participants, people from other organizations or groups yours works with - anyone you work with in any way
• Look at what's going on around you
  Are you the center of controversy and chaos? Or do calm and good feeling seem to reside wherever you do?
• Reach out for help in facing internal challenges
  Most of us find it difficult to change entirely on our own. A psychotherapist, a good friend, a perceptive colleague.

Leadership Role Challenges

• Keeping an eye on, and communicating, the vision
  As the guardian of a group's vision, it's up to the leader to remind everyone of what that vision is
• Keeping the everyday under control while you continue to pursue the vision
  You can't maintain the vision without making sure that there's paper in the printer, that you understand the legal implications of an action you plan to take, that people know what they're supposed to be doing.             
• Setting an example
  If you want others in the group to show mutual respect, to work hard, to embrace the vision and mission of the organization, to include everyone in their thinking and decisions, you have to start by doing those things yourself.
• Maintaining effectiveness over time
  One of the hardest lessons of leadership is that you're never done. No matter how well things go, no matter how successful your group or organization or initiative is. 

• Avoiding burnout
  This is a challenge not only for leaders, because a burned out leader can affect the workings       of a whole organization. Leader burnout is a product of being overwhelmed by the workload, the frustrations, the stress, and the time demands of the position, multiplied by the number of years spent in it.         
• Finding support
  Clichés often become clichés because they're true. It is lonely at the top, largely because a good leader tries to make things go smoothly enough that others aren't aware of the amount of work she's doing. The leader may have no one to share her concerns with, and may have to find her own satisfaction, because others don't recognize the amount and nature of her contribution. 

Perhaps even more threatening than burnout is "burn-down" - the loss of passion and intensity that can come with familiarity and long service. You may still care about what you're doing, but the enthusiasm just isn't there anymore. In many ways, this condition may be even harder to deal with than burnout. At least if you're burned out, it's obvious: if you're burned down, especially if it's happened over a long period, neither you nor others may have realized it. 

***How to cope with Leadership Role challenges

• Create mechanisms to revisit your vision
  Hold occasional meetings and at-least-yearly retreats to discuss vision and renew commitment. These will serve both to review the vision to see if it still resonates (and to rework it if necessary), and to renew your and others' purpose and pursuit of it.
• Share the burden
  Surround yourself with good people who share your vision. If you can find others who are competent and committed to whom you can delegate some of the tasks of leadership
• Find an individual or group with whom you can discuss the realities of leadership
  In many communities, some heads of organizations meet on a regular basis to talk about the difficulties and rewards of their situations with others who truly understand.
• Make sure you have personal time
  In order to maintain perspective and to keep yourself fresh, you need to take time away from being a leader, and away from your organization or initiative. It's important to have an activity that gets you away from your daily concerns, and to take days off from time to time. Some people meditate every day, others play music regularly, others participate in sports or fitness activities.

How to become a good leader?

• Be yourself, but be willing to grow

Learning how to be a successful leader involves knowing yourself well first Principles are important.

• Establish goals and commit to your vision
  Once you’re in a leadership role, you must decide exactly how you want your group to accomplish your “vision”.
• Know your team and create camaraderie
  In addition to providing goals and vision, you will also be in charge of motivation, and you must know how to get what you need from each individual member of your team.
• Communicate: Talk and Listen
  It sounds simple and perhaps obvious, but in order to be an effective leader, you must communicate your ideas effectively and also listen to the opinions of your group.
• Evaluate Performances and Appreciate Others’ Work
  Look at what you and your group have accomplished, daily, weekly, monthly or whatever time frame makes sense for the activity involved.

Richard’s Key Points on Leadership

1. Principles are important
2. Being an effective leader is not a popularity contest
3. Leadership is both learned and innate
4. Know “When” to use “What” Leadership Style
5. People will always be your most important Asset, take care of them, be their Advocate
6. Sometimes it is in our most difficult situations, when the leadership inside us comes out

 

Good Leaders never stop learning about how to become Great Leaders

   
7.   One of the greatest challenges of leadership is shouldering the responsibility it confers. Part of that responsibility is the responsibility to deal with those aspects of yourself that can keep you from being an effective leader. That's not easy, but the rewards are great.

8.  An important piece of information, one that's often quoted in community work, but which can't be overstated: the Chinese character for "crisis" combines the characters for "danger" and "opportunity."


 

The following sites were used in developing this article

http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/how-to-develop-a-leadership-style/

http://www.fastcompany.com/1838481/6-leadership-styles-and-when-you-should-use-them

http://www.educational-business-articles.com/six-leadership-styles.html

http://guides.wsj.com/management/developing-a-leadership-style/how-can-young-women-develop-a-leadership-style/

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/leadership-ideas/leadership-challenges/main