Dear friends,
I wrote this short article on leadership more than a year back and shared it among friends thru email. Moving on to blog now.
Contrary to common understanding, leadership is NOT about managing your subordinates at workplace. It is more about the ability to influence others. You need it in all spheres of life. At work place you need leadership skills even if you have no subordinates. It modern society, it is a prime requirement for you to grow.
Here is my own definition of leadership in one sentence.
Leadership is a way of creating an environment around you in which people are motivated to follow you.
• We need leadership skills at work place, whether we have people reporting to us or not.
• We need leadership skills in our personal life to be able to have positive impact in the life of our children and other loved ones.
• We need leadership skills, even for realizing our own hobbies and hidden potential.
I am currently reading an excellent book on leadership “Developing the Leader Within You”, John C Maxwell. Here is how the author distinguishes leader from a manager.
• Manager drives the workers. Leader coaches them.
• Manager depends on authority. Leader on goodwill
• Manager inspires fear. Leader inspires enthusiasm
• Manager says I. Leader say we.
• Manager knows how it is done. Leader shows how.
• Manager says ‘Go’. Leader says ‘Let’s go’.
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Neeraj,
You may like to consider Spiritual Quotient within the domain of leadership. To me, most of the soft skills are borne out of attitudes & convictions, which in turn are greatly shaped by ones SQ, though he may be unaware of the same or shall we say, uninitiated to the spiritual domain. A realization may sharpen leadership abilities.
Thanks for picking up another of my favourite topics. But, I wonder what are we going to do with all this sharing. Nevertheless, sharing between two of us in itself is a great redemption for me.
I wonder, you still have access to my article on Emotion management, which touched upon Leadership issues.
For the last five years, i have been practicing within my official domain for inculcating right mix of it. A lot of people in my company have been trained by Covey’s team on 7 habits. Ours is a co., which has to rely very very heavily on Technical & Managerial skills, which has eroded people’s leadership skills.
In our domain, we are required to manage internal & external environment (at my hierarchical level & above). I found myself in lacking many skills, but found those in many of my subordinates. I have been delegating those resposibilities irrespective of my hierarchical position or ego, with good results. For one, it has afforded me time to persue with your blogs.:).
Awaiting more thought provoking issues from you. I will do my bit.