Introduction

• Definition of leadership
• Leadership
  • Leadership and effectiveness
  • Leadership qualities
  • Leadership functions

Characteristics

• Introduction
  • Identifying the leader
  • Trust
  • Integrity
  • Respect
  • Foresight
  • Mutual attraction
  • Relationships
  • Support
  • Empowerment
  • Credibility
  • Winner mentality
  • Leadership expansion
• Influence
  • Introduction
  • Position
  • Leadership styles for learning
  • Who?
  • How?
  • Personal traits
  • Selling
• Confidence
  • Introduction
  • Development part 1
  • Development part 2
• Personality traits
  • Personality - general
  • Personality - action
  • Myers Briggs Type Indicator
  • Myers Briggs Type Indicator uses
  • FIRO B
  • OPQ
  • Pathology
  • Style spider
  • Style spider - choices
  • Leadership styles - adverse behaviour
• Motivation
  • Introduction
  • Douglas McGregor X and Y theory
  • Abraham Maslow
  • Frederick Herzberg
  • Key problems
  • People part 1
  • People part 2
• Be positive
  • Issues and action
  • Be clever
  • When in trouble
  • Project management
  • Change management
  • Communication
  • Self discipline
  • Change
  • Attitude

Strategy

• Long term
  • Long term investment
  • Direction and vision
  • Communication
• Strategy
  • Introduction
  • Selecting
  • Recording
  • Developing
  • The schedule plan
  • Overview
  • Part of leadership
• The vision
  • Introduction
  • Preparing
  • Personalities
  • General
  • Practicality
  • Stakeholders
• Change
  • Progress
  • Problems of change
  • Freeze to freedom

Personal development

• Introduction
  • Proactivity
  • Proactive behaviour
  • Personal direction
  • Personal direction - generating ideas
  • Skill development
  • Delegation
  • Values
• Time management
  • Prioritise
  • Prioritise - basics
  • Timing
• Problem solving
  • SWOT analysis
  • Forces
  • The problem
  • Insight
  • Insight development
  • Problem solving basics part 1
  • Problem solving basics part 2
• The three C's
  • Introduction
  • Action focus part 1
  • Action focus part 2
• The emerging leader
  • Emerging leaders
  • The boss
• Training
  • Introduction
  • Selection
  • Opportunity
  • Follow the leader
  • Follow the leader - adverse behaviour
  • Chess the middle game
  • Standards

General

• Communication
  • Open questions
  • Meetings
  • Agenda
• At the top
  • Letting go
  • Continuity
  • Top of the ladder
  • Loneliness at the top part 1
  • Loneliness at the top part 2
  • The Top team
• Structure
• Life transitions
• Balance
• Open questions
• Business
  • CEO
  • Chairman
  • Mergers and acquisitions
• Leaders and managers

Be positive - communication

The vision

A leader will establish a vision for the organisation which will be pursued over a particular time period.
If he or she doesn’t, then he or she is just maintaining the status quo and generally adheres to the view ‘if it isn’t broke don’t fix it’.

Assuming you are a leader who doesn’t just want to ‘hold on to the reins’ until the next leader appears you will be devising a vision.
In order to achieve the vision you must convince people that it has merit in a positive manner.

For any vision to be successful it must go through the phases, setting, communicating and facilitating.

Setting

If you set or create a vision that is too complex you will not be able to communicate it properly. If this fails there will be little enthusiasm for it.

Some visions can have very negative impacts, for example, many dictators are not the most popular of people.
Your vision must have a visible benefit for everyone in the organisation from the bottom to the top.

People must realise what it means if the vision is achieved, how you will get there in terms of the strategy and what it means to them as an individual.
It is not as easy at it might appear to create a simple vision which is easy to communicate and has meaning at all levels of the organisation.
Many people involved with projects will have created simple visions for teams.

The achievement of the vision should be treated as a project in its own right.
Any vision should have a few key elements.

Simplicity.
Easy to remember.
A time frame.
Some key targets to achieve in the short term.
It should be unique to the organisation.
It should help focus on two or three strategic items.
Every level of the organisation can see visible benefits.

Communicating

There are many mechanisms for communication. Some are well known for boring people to death, for example, the newsletter, video and email.
People naturally distrust any form of communication that is not face to face. Newsletters have their place in providing background information but usually struggle to convince people when personal impact is at stake.

Whatever communication method you choose you must be consistent with the message.
Communicating the message once is fatal. People will easily forget. Repetition is the key.

If you can use more than one method of communication it will have a couple of positive effects.

Firstly, you will reach more people.
Secondly, individuals have preferred methods of communication and respond differently. The information may be the same but the mechanism of communication may lead to a positive result for particular individuals.

Some of the more obvious method of communicating are:

Newsletters.
Video.
Email.
Websites.
Training meetings.
As part of team meetings.
Conferences.
Face to face walkabouts.
Mobile phone messages.

The latter is a classic that may not appeal to many but others might love it.

With all of these modes of communication you must provide a means of feedback so that you can assess the level of resistance, and peoples real fears and issues. You should have already considered the possible hurdles to change. The communication process should try to recognise these fears and allay them.

Communication is not just about what you plan to do but what has been achieved.
Make sure you tell everyone about the successes and identify individuals who have performed well.

We know that a leader must surround himself or herself with a good team.
Without them there will be no direction and the vision will be doomed to failure.
It is a must for the top team to buy into the vision for success.

Apart from the top team there are key individuals within the organisation that hold more influence than their actual position would suggest.
If you can identify these individuals and convince them of the merits of the vision they will pass on their positive impressions through the grapevine.
This can be a very important means of communication.

Facilitating

As a leader, trying to reach a vision, you will be completely useless without a good a team and the people resource to drive it forward.

The quality of the people is important but they have to reflect those you will need to achieve the vision.
If you look just at technical competence you may be disappointed if your whole vision relies on great customer service.
It may be easier to employ people with the customer service skills and train them to do the technical requirements.

As a leader you may have all the power but you will not have any success if you believe you can do it all yourself.
You can’t be everywhere, know everything and be all wise.

What you can do is focus on what you do best and delegate the rest.
You need to apply yourself where you think you can add the most value by creating the biggest impact.

Achieving the vision is like any other project:

Identify the problem you are trying to solve.
Establish the vision.
Clarify the strategy.
Identify goals and milestones.
Develop a schedule of tasks to implement the strategy.

These aspects are discussed in more detail in ‘The Complete Project management package’.

The strategy can not be implemented without a budget.
Money is usually limited. It is easy to justify expanding a budget and this should be resisted by any leader no matter how logical the argument.
Keeping an eye on the budget and issues surrounding it is a big part of leadership.
Bare in mind that many budgets are unrealistic from the start. For all sorts of reasons people do not tell the truth when estimating the costs of their input.
If the original plan is way out the budget has no chance of success.

If you hope to maintain the momentum to complete your vision it is a good idea to recognise achievement along the way.
This means different things to different people. Some will feel happy with personal recognition and the kudos of their name in lights and others would like other incentives, for example, money or time off.

Make sure that whatever the reward is the criteria have been set well.
Generally you should reward quality of performance and not just quantity.
There is little point in hitting a target of 100,000 widgets per month if the rework rate goes up from 5% to 25% for instance.

Another tricky area is to get consistency of criteria across departments. This often causes conflict which is hard to resolve.

In order to achieve your vision problems will need solutions. Many teams will be set the tasks of resolving particular issues.
Just be wary that the leader of the team will tend to influence the solution. A marketing person will tend to lean towards a marketing solution.
A financial expert may look towards cost cutting etc. It is well known that there will be more than one solution for any problem.
It is possible that many solutions can be implemented each chipping away at the problem. You may need to prioritise these.
Make sure there are justifications for each solution and the benefits of implementation are clear.

The leader needs people, the right ones. The top team is critical. If you have the opportunity to change the team it is quite likely that you will want to match the skills with the strategy for your vision. It has the added bonus of removing persons who seem to wield more power, to the detriment of the vision, than you might like.

Many strategies require the acquisition of another organisation. In general, this may not be a good thing for some of the stakeholders both shareholders and staff. A merger often has economies of scale and a need for less staff. The acquiring company then has more physical and technical resources at its fingertips to help achieve its vision.

Be wary that some of these changes require the costly expertise of external consultants who are only too happy to help you.

As a leader you will have set the vision, the strategy and established the top team.
It is likely that you will still want to control some aspects personally. These areas will be where you feel you can best add value.

One area that is common is to become more customer focused. By deciding on what the market requires a leader can focus his or her energy in establishing the brand for the company. It then is a matter of deciding whether you have the correct technical and people skills to achieve your vision.

As a leader if your natural expertise is in marketing you may wish to focus in these areas. If your expertise is in technology you may wish to focus here etc.
Where ever you focus it must add value to your efforts to reach the vision.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is a big area for many companies. Without these the company may have no business.

Property is another area of focus for some businesses particularly during an acquisition as outlet duplication, providing the same customer needs, can be reduced.

Leadership in non profit organisations can have its own problems. If you get into trouble your limited financial resources may not allow you to spend your way out of trouble. The only solution is good management and leadership skills.

If you decide to focus on a particular area make sure that it adds value towards the vision.
In addition, you should bring skills no one else possesses. If they do, you should delegate it.