Personal Leadership

By Ann Vanino

For me, leadership is personal. It starts with the individual. Each person brings who they are to the task of leading. If you are a leader or aspire to leadership, I ask you: Is all well in your world? Are you happy? Are you operating at maximum efficiency? If your answer is "yes," then the world is a better place. Personal leadership is about management of self. You start with you, so that you can effectively lead others.

We have all seen leaders who are not managing their life very well. They are leading, but they are not giving their best. Their leadership skills suffer. We have also seen leaders at the top of their game, who manage their lives well. Their leadership skills thrive and those around them are inspired.

Here are some elements of personal leadership:

Balance

Balance is a state of equilibrium among the various demands of your life. Balance is dynamic as opposed to static. For the most part, you are constantly making adjustments, sometimes minor sometimes major, to achieve balance. Maintaining balance allows you to function effectively and productively as you lead.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment comes when you are living the life you want to live. You are able to give your all and be energized by your work. Your being and your work are a match. Your work flows and what you need comes to you. You are aligned with your destiny.

A Positive Relationship with Time

For years, management consultants and self-improvement experts have advised you to "manage" time. Planners, organizers and linear structures are useful, but in reality there is too much information and too many demands on your time to properly manage them. Time cannot be managed, you have to manage yourself.

Focus

Focus allows you to channel your energies to create the life you want. Without focus, things do not happen. Creating focus begins with identifying the top priorities in your life. Once your priorities are identified, spend your time honoring those priorities and getting them done.

Confidence

Confidence attracts people. As a leader if you project self-confidence, people will want to follow you. Confidence involves self-knowledge and appropriate humility. A lack of confidence belies problems that sabotage your personal leadership.

How are you doing with your personal leadership? Here are some things you can do to build your personal leadership skills.

CONDUCT A PERSONAL LEADERSHIP ASSESSMENT

Ask yourself the questions below. Analyze your answers to help you determine how you are doing and if there are any areas you need to work on.

Are there "energy drains" you would like to eliminate from your life?

Is your life in balance?

Do you choose what the components of your life will be?

Do you focus on priorities?

Are there elements of your life that are not fulfilling?

Do you live in the present moment?

How is your relationship with time?

Are your relationships and friendships supportive and fulfilling?

Do you like the way you present yourself to the world?

Are you maximizing your impact, using all you are?

Are you healthy?

Are there any fears that have gotten the better of you?

Are you speaking your true voice?

OBSERVE EFFECTIVE LEADERS

The power of observation cannot be discounted. Identify several people that you think are effective leaders. Turn the lens of your observing from how they lead to how they manage their life. Read about them. If you have the opportunity, interview them. For each person you observe, do your best to determine how their self-management affects their ability to lead. From this observation identify your key learnings about personal leadership and how you will apply them to your life.

CREATE FOCUS

Identify the top three things you want to focus on in your life. For each thing, identify what you need to do over the next year to achieve it. Set a plan.

ELIMINATE IMPEDIMENTS

What is holding you back from being the best you can be? Answer this question and let go of what no longer serves you.

Your external leadership skills need a strong foundation within. Personal leadership can provide that foundation. Change within will lead to change without.

Ann Vanino is a business coach, consultant and trainer who specializes in helping people find fulfillment at work. Ann's book, Leadership on Trial: Lessons from The Apprentice offers leadership lessons from the popular TV show. You can learn more about Ann and her work at http://www.MovingForward.net . You can reach Ann at E-mail: Ann@MovingForward.net or Phone: 661-944-6329 (US.)

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Common Sense Leadership

By Billy Arcement

As I read about leadership and management topics and observe events in my consulting services that occur within organizations, I sometimes wonder where some of today’s managers and leaders get their rationale for making decisions regarding people. It’s almost like they have lost plain old common sense when it comes to relating and working with the people they lead and go out of their way to create chaos. Here are a few ideas I’ve picked up during my 50+ years of being thrust into leadership and management roles that I hope prove valuable to you as you strive to bring your common sense leadership into your world of work.

Provide clear direction. Too often leaders assume workers understand their instructions regarding job details. Never forget that it up to the person sending the message to make sure that those receiving it understand the meaning. Never assume, and always be very explicit with your directions. Ask for feedback to be sure understanding is clear and, if necessary, provide training to shore-up skills to get the job done right. Don’t set up people to fail. Remember their failure does reflect on your leadership abilities.

Recognize and reward good performance. We all like to experience feelings of importance. Genuinely be appreciative when workers get the job done right, on time, and at minimum expense. Use staff meetings and on-the-spot encouragement to let people know you appreciate their efforts. When appropriate, and consistent with organizational policies, offer a reward. It can be as simple as a sincere thank you, a lunch with you or as rewarding as a promotion with more responsibility and pay. Recognize and win!

Strive to remove tension in the workplace. Research shows that too little or too much tension has the same result—suboptimal productivity. Maintaining the proper tension is a balancing act for leaders. One must recognize that when tension is too low employees tend to relax, not take on challenges, reduce their efforts and lower their productivity. Like wise, when tension is too high, the workplace becomes prone to employee accidents and sicknesses. Anxieties and stress begin to dominate the workplace thus also losing productivity. Common sense leaders strive to find the proper middle ground. One must always have their antenna up to pick up worker signals. One must also understand that leadership style is a tension builder or tension reducer.

Learn to emulate the traits great leaders possess. Extensive research into what qualities great leaders possess has identified the following as important abilities. Use your common sense and see to it that these traits become part of your leadership style. It’s a good list to start creating a bold, new approach to leading others.

Vision, purpose, and direction: Do you know where you want to take the organization, why you want to get there and how you will do it?

Technical / Administrative skills: Do you have the understanding and tools to get the job done and can you keep the activities flowing in an effective and efficient manner?

Cognition / idea presentation / thinking skills: Can you process the information (knowledge) needed in a way that is understandable and are your people able to sufficiently utilize their thinking abilities to help smooth the path to success?

Drive and motivation: Are you willing to persist and strive to overcome obstacles and moments of discouragement in order to accomplish the vision?

Trust and respect (in both directions): Have I earned respect and trust rather than demanding it?

Teamwork and collaboration: Do I have a good understanding that I cannot do everything alone?

Ability to empower and enable performance: Am I willing to trust that people can help and do I support training to grow their skills?

Capacity to coach, appraise, and reward performance (give feedback): Do I recognize the difference between good and poor performance?

Workers rank these abilities in order of importance to them. As part of the research, workers were shown the above list and ranked the list in order of importance to them. As you carry out your common sense approach to leading, look at how these workers ranked the list and then run the same research with your team of workers. That approach is clearly common sense leadership and might make for an interesting discovery. Capacity to coach, appraise, and reward performance Ability to empower and enable performance Teamwork and collaboration Trust and respect Vision, purpose, and direction Cognition / idea presentation / thinking skills Technical / Administrative Skills Drive and Motivation

Never forget people are watching. I’m always amazed at leaders who continually alienate workers, demonstrate an untrusting management style, grab power and control by stepping on others, and in general are not people persons. These individuals clearly have lost their sense of direction. They lack real common sense when it comes to leading and relating to others. Workers watch your actions much more intently than they listen to your words and the end result is a high tension, low productivity working environment when there is incongruency.

Maximize the skills and talents of those you lead. If you have someone who brings a skill set to the table and you ignore seeking ways to utilize those skills, you are clearly shortchanging yourself, the organization and your worker. Common sense leadership knows that blending all the skills and talents of team members makes for a more effective, efficient, and energetic team. Do you have a clear understanding of all the gifts you’ve been handed and, are you putting these gifts into play? Common sense says that is how it should be done.

Closing Thoughts

We have a leadership crisis in this country at every level. I don’t know why except to think that we have become a very impersonal society where we seldom place the needs of others as an important part of our interactions. Self-centeredness dominates and servant leadership is a rarity.

I recently came across this survey of characteristics for the next president of the United States. As you consider your vote for our next leader, why not use the list as part of your screening process. Information on the survey is found on the NextNationalCEO.com website.

Insightful Judgment, Visionary, Trustworthy, Gets Things Done, Inspires Others, Good Judge of People Influences Others, Courageous, Confident, Energetic.

Billy Arcement, MEd., is a Professional Speaker, Consultant, Leadership Strategist and President of The Results Group. He wrote the books, Searching for Success and Journeying on Holy Ground. Learn more about his services at www.SearchingForSuccess.com 2008. All rights reserved. Use by permission.

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