Encourage Leadership Training
One of the things that employers look for in their employees, apart from the standard abilities like being a team player, being flexible, being detail-oriented, possessing the right skills and qualifications as well as good work ethic, is the drive to learn more and become more. From time to time, you might feel like you’re simply a tiny cog in a bigger machine that isn’t even aware of your presence or understand the value of what you do, but there is someone who is keeping an eye on what you do and how you perform, and that person is usually your immediate boss. He or she is the one who sees your performance and your contributions to the team and is able to recommend you for a raise or a promotion as needed. Employers would do well to encourage skills development in their employees. This adds to their arsenal of skills, making them more valuable to the company and ensuring that their skills are used to benefit the company. One of the workshops employers must encourage their workers to take is leadership training. Some people might think that developing leadership qualities in employees could pose a threat to the current higher-ups since it sounds as though people will be groomed to usurp their positions. This isn’t the case at all. Leadership training simply means that companies will be able to have teams of workers who are all able to take charge and have a thorough understanding of what it takes to make a company run smoothly. Encouraging leadership training in employees also means that employees have a chance for advancement, keeping them on their toes and helping them exercise their potential in their careers. Leadership training is not something that should be restricted solely to the heads of a company, although it would benefit them in the event that they forget what true leadership is about, help them reassess their progress and figure out where they may be going wrong, and allow them to be more sensitive to the needs of their workers. Everyone who is willing should have a shot at leadership training, especially since it will not only improve their outlook on their jobs and their skills but also allow them to make use of it in their lives. Keep in mind that leadership training is not just about creating the future heads of the company and it certainly doesn’t mean that participants will be actively angling for currently occupied top positions. It offers people a chance for advancement and self-improvement, and employers should recognize that having a team of highly skilled and effective with leadership abilities is much preferable to having workers who are skilled but possess a drone-like mentality.
A leader – simply put!
The question of what is leadership has received an inordinate amount of airplay. Everyone accepts that it is a critical dimension of organizational growth. Ongoing leadership development often referred to as leadership training, is critical. Unfortunately, the higher in the organization we go, the less often we undertake formal development. There is a myriad of reasons for this – some very self-soothing! While we should continue to seek ongoing development and training, perhaps what is most important is that we remind ourselves of the key essentials of leadership. In searching for the right leadership recipe, we can often be overloaded with messages about what we need to do more/better/less to be an effective leader. Often we fall into the trap of doing for doings sake and, playing the role of the leader that is forged by the environment around us rather than what made us a good leader in the first place. Perhaps we need to firstly look at the core character attributes that provide the fertile ground for good leadership to grow. I recently read through the Hippocratic Oath – the oath where doctors pledge to undertake ethical medical practice. Perhaps not so surprisingly, since first written by Hippocrates in the 4th Century BC, it has been translated and ‘modernized’ a number of times. Regardless of this, at its core, any interpretation of the oath infers that practitioners must … ‘do no harm’. If the essence of leadership is the power of influence, then you can understand that its use and misuse can have long-lasting effects. Taking a lead from the medical fraternity, do no harm has a certain core principled-centered base that may guide our actions as leaders. Similarly, I once heard a leader talk about his personalized version of principled-centered leadership. In testing a decision or action that impacted people, his first test was to objectively answer his own question – is this fair to all concerned? But it is his second test on which he places most importance – simply put, if a decision or action he took was to make the front page of the newspaper, could he comfortably look his children in the eyes and explain it. In these current economic times, cost management practices such as retrenchments have become more prevalent. Certainly, for the sake of the long-term viability of the organization and its employees, they may be necessary at times. However, in keeping our oath or the front-page test, it will be how we treat people throughout these processes that separate true leaders from pretenders! So whenever we seek to be better leaders, firstly look within to see if we have the central requisites. By working from these, we will be better positioned to be the leader we want to be.
Kaizen Culture in the Workplace
Kaizen is a system which requires interaction and participation from all employees, from the front line crew to the upper management and even CEO of the company. Everyone is encouraged to brainstorm and come up with suggestions for improvement on a regular basis. It is a continuous activity, carried out throughout the year. Employees from all levels of a company work together proactively to achieve continuous, small and incremental improvements to the business processes. In this way, different levels of experiences and skills can be brought together to create very powerful techniques for making improvements in the company’s processes. Kaizen is a process, which if performed correctly, humanizes the workplace, eliminates hard work while encouraging smart work, and motivates people to conduct experiments based on their suggestions, learn to identify and reduce wastes in the business processes. When Kaizen is implemented as an action plan through a series of Kaizen events, it teaches employees to think in different ways about their work. They are pushed to think how their current work can be further improved in order to achieve greater success. Implementing Kaizen in workplace There are three stages in implementation of Kaizen in any organization. 1. Encourage participation – To ensure active participation from all employees, it is necessary that first awareness about Kaizen is created. After the necessary awareness training sessions are provided, conduct and promote Kaizen events and provide rewards to employees on successful implementations of ideas which are the results of these events. In such events, direct involvement of management is also important. 2. Training and Education – A proper training is required for executives to learn the essence of Kaizen. The management level should thoroughly understand Kaizen in an organizational vision context, which needs to be followed vigorously to achieve the desired business results. They must also be taught how to be impartial towards everyone and encourage their employees to actively participate. 3. Quality level improvement – After training is completed, people should remain focused on making changes towards improvement. They should take measures to start making small and incremental changes towards achieving long term goals, like improving efficiency, processes and quality. In organizations where Kaizen is being implemented, transparency between different levels of the organization is very crucial. Effective communication should take place between all the levels of employees. While employees are brainstorming for ideas, it is important that management also gets involved in these sessions. The manager also should ensure that their suggestions and ideas are being acted upon immediately and not delayed by a week or month. Employees should be kept informed about other activities going on in the team and how their ideas are being worked upon. People should not feel that their ideas have all gone waste and are not being used. A positive mind set is what will help in keeping Kaizen alive in the organization. Thus, constant application of Kaizen creates huge long term value by developing the culture that is really needed for true continuous improvement.
Leadership: Management and Leadership
Although some people treat the terms management and leadership as synonyms, the two should be distinguished. As a matter of fact, there can be leaders of completely unorganized groups. On the other hand, there can be managers, as conceived here, only where organized structures create roles. Separating leadership from management has important analytical advantages. It permits leadership to be singled out for study without the encumbrance of qualifications relating to the more general issues of management. To clarify, leadership is certainly an important aspect of managing. The ability to lead effectively is one of the keys to being an effective manager; also, undertaking the other essentials of managing — doing the entire managerial job — has an important bearing on ensuring that a manager will be an effective leader. Managers must exercise all the functions of their role in order to combine human and material resources to achieve objectives. The key to doing this is the existence of a clear role and a degree of discretion or authority to support the manager’s actions. The essence of leadership is followership. In other words, it is the willingness of other people to follow that makes a person a leader. Moreover, people tend to follow those whom they see as providing a means of achieving their own desires, wants and needs. Leadership and motivation are closely interconnected. By understanding motivation, one can appreciate better what people want and why they act as they do. Also, leaders may not only respond to subordinates’ motivations but also arouse or dampen them by means of the organizational climate they develop. Both these factors are as important to leadership as they are to management. Leadership can be defined as influence, that is, the art of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals. Ideally, people should be encouraged to develop not only a willingness to work but also a willingness to work with zeal and confidence.
How To Unleash All Your Leadership Potential
There is a steady flow of information in the form of books, articles, white papers and training all in the context of “what is leadership” or “how to develop a leader” ?. In this issue, I will avoid those two questions and write about two others that I believe might be on the minds of a lot you readers and they are: Why does better leadership make a difference? and how does better leadership achieve those differences? Leadership is a highly unique form of human behavior that requires the integration of character, knowledge and experience. So what can you do if you step up and unleash your leadership potential? Change the world. Your journey to unleashing your leadership potential begins with a great understanding of self. Discover your personality traits and how they relate to leadership. When we know ourselves, we can maximize our positive traits, and become aware of our weaker areas, which help us to achieve our leadership potential. Once you understand and know yourself, next you must hone your communication skills. These are not limited to your public speaking skills either. This includes your writing style and your body language. Your ability to communicate effectively enhances your ability to improve interpersonal relationships. Another important skill is to learn how to learn. Examine different teaching methods and learning styles to identify how you and those you may lead learn best. This skill will greatly enhance your ability to make decisions and give clear instructions. An Exceptional Leader is one that recognizes the value of harnessing the skills and abilities of team members and leads them toward greater efficiency and effectiveness….And so leader is not a title and leadership is not something you are born into. Leadership is something you develop. This is what Dr. Ken Blanchard, in his book “The Heart of A Leader” had to say about good leaders; “If you want to know why your people are not performing well, step up to the mirror and take a peek.”
