Leadership - Follow the leader
Follow the leader
Setting a good example
If you are an emerging leader [see Emerging leaders], your senior managers will be looking for attitudes and behaviours that mark you out for future leadership roles.
Potential can be seen in many areas including written reports, emails especially and the way you give presentations in terms of clarity and focus on key issues that senior managers need. The poor grammar and spelling mistakes in emails in particular become a very visible gauge of your attitudes.
Setting a good example is a little more than just reading books and going on courses to learn about leadership.
There are aspects you would be wise to be aware of at an early stage.
The first step is to improve your leadership knowledge and experience.
Gaining knowledge and experience
The learning experience is always additive. Over a period of time you will gain knowledge and experiences that will always give some improvement in your application of leadership techniques.
We have seen in the problem solving section [see Problem solving basics] that not all solutions will derive just from vigorous analysis of data.
Other aspects like insight, drawn from years of experiences, are important.
Unfortunately, the typical education system looks upon problem solving from a ‘scientific’ standpoint of analysis of data leading to the desired result.
We know that true leadership requires you to influence others, build trust and eventually get people to achieve things.
Leadership should be more than just attending a team building course.
Learning from others
If you are fortunate you will have a boss that is also a good leader. You can use him or her as a role model. Think about how they would handle a particular situation. Talk to them about your own problems and get ideas and tips. Naturally, a good leader boss will be helping you any way to develop. Watch how they react when under pressure. How they perform when crucial decisions are required? How do they chair meetings?
A lot will come down to recognising your own weak areas and ascertaining how others manage these points.
If you are unable to confide directly with your boss find another suitable role model who may be prepared to take you under his or her wing.
That is find a coach or failing this a mentor who you can turn to for experience with particular issues.
A role model could be anyone in the public eye for example.
Watching good leaders is good practice from the start so that you build up good habits and avoid bad ones. If you recognise that someone is poor think why and try not to make the same mistakes.
In this way you will pick up good practices from many leaders that will eventually mould your own leadership style.
From this store of knowledge you can ask ‘what would that person have done’, which will help you formulate a way forward.
Learning from yourself
By this we mean your own trial and error. This may form part of a structured approach where you move from department to department or from country to country gaining experience as you do so. Moving from job to job could be by your own design in order to acquire necessary skills.
You will need to look carefully at any moves to make sure there are the opportunities to improve your leadership skills and not just to gain technical expertise.
Movement is less risky and easier when you are younger.
Fast track learning
A few ways of gaining experience may give faster results. People who have gained the necessary insight as a result of years of experience may tend to bulk at the idea that good leadership skills can be acquired in a couple of years. However, with astute observation you can certainly learn many lessons in a short period of time.
If you begin your own business, and have staff, your learning curve will be very steep. This particularly applies to learning from your mistakes.
The problem here is that you will have no one to help you as a mentor or coach. One way to fill the gap is to read about leadership principles so that you will know what to look out for. In this way you will be in a better position to recognise a learning opportunity when someone shows good leadership skills.
Once you know what areas demonstrate good leadership you can go one step further.
You can list particular skills that a good leader ought to have, for example.
Goal setting
Delegating
Motivational techniques [see The Complete Motivation package]
Listening skills
Presentation skills
Written communication (reports and emails)
Interviewing
Negotiation
Problem solving
Time management
Vision setting
Decision making
Energy
Professional etiquette
Enthusiasm etc.
You can then draw up a table with all of these attributes and skills.
Against each one identify a person who does it extremely well and a person who is particularly bad.
For each of these try to consider exactly what it is that makes them good or bad.
You may wish to go and talk to the ‘good’ person to find out more detail.
It is, perhaps, not a good idea to talk to the ‘bad’ person about his or her failings!
How many boxes does the ‘good’ leader get a tick in? Why does he not tick all the boxes? What are some of his or her failings?
Even leaders that you think have it all will readily admit that they have weaknesses.
Rules and politics
Image
Image is important across an organisation. From the top down there will be certain styles of dress code depending on who you are trying to impress. When you are dealing with clients you will usually wish to wear formal clothes, suit and tie etc, to make the biggest impact.
This dress code gives the impression of professionalism and competence.
However, in the fast paced world of internet businesses there is often less emphasis on formality whilst trying to maintain an air of fresh ideas and state of the art thinking.
Internal company rules for dress code are often more relaxed trying to break down barriers between individuals to create a nice friendly working atmosphere.
Culture
The culture of an organisation can govern a lot of the direction in which projects go and how they are managed.
If the culture of the organisation doesn’t fit in with your core values then you must either accept the disparity or move on.
If you move on you are not guaranteed that the grass is greener on the other side. When you start afresh you will have to learn a new culture and you may be disappointed.
You will need to rebuild a track record, regain a reputation for honesty and trust and build networks.
Always observe the successful people in an organisation to see how they behave.
Key behaviours
Working on small parts of your behaviour that leaders appreciate can get you noticed. Or, putting it another way if you fail to do some of these things it may well harm your career in leadership.
All leaders require loyalty from their followers. Without this their influence is lost and their effectiveness is undermined.
Don’t talk about people behind their backs. Sometimes the treatment you get from your boss or another person can get to the point where you want to shout out. Try to resist it. If the culprit is your boss then move elsewhere.
You must have the confidence to bring negative views to your boss without fear. This is all part of your own integrity and being honest.
Don’t try to hide issues as they can cause even greater problems if left unresolved. Be honest. Try not to hide facts by showing them in a favourable light.
When you gain a project make sure you are happy with it. Question its goals and any other aspect if you feel uncomfortable with it.
If necessary learn the art of saying ‘no’. When you are given a project the leader above you must have faith that you are going to deliver.
You must be reliable. Never mislead your boss with promises you can not keep. In necessary, err on the side of caution.
Under promise and over deliver.
Focus on solutions and not problems all of the time. If you have to raise an issue don’t make them trivial and provide a potential solution at the same time.
Show that you are dynamic and demonstrate plenty of energy and enthusiasm for the job. When you first start you won’t get the pick of the projects.
If you do end up with less interesting minor tasks just get on with it.
Common complaints
If you ask a group of people what irritating aspects of behaviour they hate there are very few surprises. The trick is to make sure people are not thinking of you at the time. Some of the common poor behaviours are.
The boss often doesn’t communicate the reasons behind his decisions very well. Ambiguity is common. Let your boss know what work load you have and what your priorities are. Agreeing these with your boss is a good idea. If the boss tries to load too much work on to you ask him or her to verify your priorities.
Many of these aspects are covered in more detail in ‘The Complete Time management package’.
Try not to get involved in petty politics and unguarded comments in public. Don’t turn up to meetings late.
Punctuality is always well received, being continually late is definitely not. Don’t get personal when making comments during feedback.
Bullying in one form or another may be common.