Total Leadership
What kind of leader are you? If your employees were given the opportunity to fire you, how soon would you be out the door? That is a food for thought. I believe that before you finish reading this article, you will be able to answer that question. The ability to lead effectively and harmoniously harness your employee’s strengths and abilities to become better people makes you an excellent boss. Remember, bad bosses aren’t good for anyone’s health. Today’s managers must be self-aware, observant, assisting, and understanding in order to get the best from their employees and then achieve their stated objectives. After all it is results that counts, and not just being a boss.
Total leadership is the ability of a leader to give birth to “himself”. Lion gives birth to lion, monkey gives birth to monkey, and a true leader gives birth to leaders not followers. As a popular biblical verse states, “Every seed produces after its kind.” Your leadership becomes questionable when the people you are leading are not following. Following means they take after your exemplary lifestyle and footprint.
Leadership is a term that means different things to different people and in different contexts. But one thing stands out—leadership involves people and it has a lot to do with influence and sacrifice. You cannot effectively lead people whom you cannot influence. To truly influence, you must be a servant leader who offer sacrifices even to your own hurt for the good of others.
Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs an organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. The organization becomes cohesive and coherent in the sense that the leader unifies, solidifies, and articulates its members through influencing to not only buy the vision of the organization but to also live it. Leaders carry out this process of influence by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, skills, traits, and ethics, which we shall discuss later. Therefore, a leader does not boss but leads members to become better employees.
To be a total leader, your followers must have trust in you and they need to be completely sold out to your vision. Korn-Ferry International, an executive search company, performed a survey on what organizations want from their leaders. The respondents said they wanted people who were both ethical and who convey a strong vision of the future.
Leaders can clearly communicate vision because people are motivated by a leader who knows where he/she is going. As a leader, how has been your vision for this year 2011? Are you working towards it or away from it? Have you caught a vision for 2012 which you will communicate to your people? The ability to communicate effectively your vision breeds confidence in your people. As Jack Welch said, “Building self-confidence in others is a huge part of leadership.” As a total leader, your employees find refuge in you when you show them the way to the future.
In any organization, a leader’s actions set the pace. They have the ability to study people and know what motivates them. They give credit to others first before taking it for themselves. Most importantly they are prepared to ACT and act NOW because they are naturally “proactive” and not “reactive”. This behavior wins trust, loyalty, and ensures the organization’s continued vitality.
As stated earlier, one of the ways a leader can build trust and influence the employees is to display a good sense of attributes composed of beliefs, values, skills, traits and ethics:
Beliefs are what we hold dear to us and are rooted deeply within us. They could be assumptions or convictions that you hold true regarding yourself, people, concepts, or things. They could be the beliefs about life, death, religion, what is good, what is bad, etc. Leaders hold strong positive belief about themselves and others.
Values are those peculiar qualities that we hold on to our lives that marks our individual personality and uniqueness. Values are about our perceived way we think things should be, especially in terms of qualities such as honesty, integrity and openness. Leaders understand that one can only pursue what they value. If you are not excellence minded you can’t pursue it. As a leader, ask yourself, “What values and virtues do I most admire and wish to incorporate in to my life?”
Skills are the knowledge and abilities that a person gains throughout life. The ability to learn a new skill varies with each individual. Some skills come almost naturally, while others come only by complete devotion to study and practice. Leaders devotes to continuous personal development.
Traits are distinguishing qualities or characteristics of a person, while character is the sum total of these traits. There are hundreds of personality traits, far too many to be discussed here. The more of these you display as a leader, the more your followers will believe and trust in you.
See you at the Top!
Dr. Elvis UKPAKA
Author. Trainer. Coach. Consultant
Lead Consultant, Visiondrivers Mgt. Consulting
+234 810 654 5127, +234 817 123 5284
www.visiondrivers.com, www.elvisukpaka.com
info@visiondrivers.com, info@elvisukpaka.com
