PREFACE
Leadership development is essential to the growth and productivity of an individual’s professional and personal life. To be successful, pursuing such an endeavor must be a conscious choice that can take two forms and occur everyday if so desired. First, you can approach leadership as a field of study: reading research, considering existing models, and internalizing the standard and established benchmarks of effective leadership. Assess what others have learned about leadership to further your own understanding. There is an abundance of material on the subject available to anyone with a library card, Internet connection, or a nearby bookstore. An intellectual approach increases your understanding of how leadership models have evolved and sharpens your ability to perceive the nuances of authentic leadership. I have used this approach personally and professionally.
A second approach is a more personal one: evaluating your own experiences in your career and personal life to build and strengthen leadership skills. Often I have attempted to apply my knowledge of leadership to a number of posts that I have held, including my time as the Supervisor of Military Intelligence Operations in Munich, Germany, and the position I once held as National Leader for two nonprofit learning centers in Pakistan. Leadership Development was actually in my job title when I was the Supervisor of Leadership Development for the Avionics Division at Rockwell International, Inc.
Within all these opportunities for leadership application, I failed more often than I succeeded. Sometimes, the feedback I received about my leadership ability was most unforgiving. When you take the responsibility to interact as a leader, people expect you to lead. And if you do not connect with people as a genuine person of humility, those you lead will share feedback with you that should steer you in the direction of humility. A humble approach and the importance of character development will then become your focus in order to improve your leadership abilities. Imagine if you expected everyone with whom you worked to operate seamlessly together right off the bat without direction and without any problems. Allowing leadership to float among a work group must be approached with a disciplined attitude, as it is not for the fainthearted.
This book is about everyday leadership where individuals find ways to become influencers, mentors, and teachers regardless of title or position, increasing their sphere of influence as they further hone their leadership capabilities. When I started considering the skills of everyday leadership I thought I knew how to lead because I had written a dissertation on the subject and was convinced I knew everything I needed to know. After much effort, I realized a purely intellectual approach did not prepare me as well as I had hoped. I still lacked the actual capacity to practice positive, authentic and human leadership. I wish I could say I understood this early on, but I did not. It took many failures before I began to look toward what constitutes the successful practice of leadership. This gave rise to years of trial-and-error in the essentials of leadership, which I will share later in this book. I can’t say that I have mastered the proper leadership method in every one of my interactions, but I do know these methods work when used. These skills can be practiced regardless of your knowledge of leadership literature or your job title. Hands-on practice is the second way one can approach leadership development.
This second approach is easy to understand but challenging to execute and can only be mastered over time if you practice everyday in your actions and conversations. It results in the daily development of leadership capacity. Consistent, successful practice then enables people to have a greater influence in all the spheres of their life, both at work and at home. Also, it prepares the person to accept - and attract—more and more responsibility personally and professionally.
The L.E.A.D.E.R.S. Method (TM) works for those who make real effort to improve their abilities to lead. I developed this method after recognizing deficits in my own leadership skill base. This method is a testimony to the lessons I have learned in my many years of leadership study and experience.
The seven essentials of the L.E.A.D.E.R.S. Method are as follows:
- Listen to Learn
- Empathize with Emotions
- Attend to Aspirations
- Diagnose and Detail
- Engage for Good Ends
- Respond with Respectfulness
- Speak with Specificity
This method takes courage, honesty, an ability to keep your own ego needs at bay, and persistent commitment. Practicing this method will lead to success.
I have found success as a leader and I have failed miserably. But I failed much less and caused fewer calamities after I developed and employed this method in my interactions with people. The L.E.A.D.E.R.S. Method not only speaks to the seven essential skills of the everyday leader, it is the beginning point in comprehensive development of everyday human leadership.
Part 1
HOW TO LEAD
INTRODUCTION
The goal of this book is to help you learn how to practice leadership in every situation, regardless of rank or station in life. It will show you how to make every interaction an opportunity to lead. Whether you consider yourself a natural born leader or not, the skills and techniques covered in the following chapters will enable you to lead in whatever situation you find yourself, both in business and outside of the workplace. Leadership can be learned, and the seven essential skills that belie the L.E.A.D.E.R.S. Method will help you develop your leadership abilities. This method has been proven to create everyday leaders: individuals who seize the potential in any and every interaction to lead, positively and authentically. So leadership exchanges occur not only with people at the top of the organization, but at every level in between. Leadership can indeed be learned, and like any skill must be increasingly practiced. The goal here is to establish yourself as a leader and continually expand your sphere of influence, so that you become a proactive and effective contributor to any effort or team in which you participate.
Anyone who has a part in the mission of a work system that involves the inputs, tasks, processes, procedures, systems, outputs, outcomes, schedules, deadlines, etc. can take an active role as a leader. These leaders can help fulfill their team’s or company’s strategic vision, and create a mentoring and non-threatening workplace for their colleagues.
OPPORTUNITIES TO LEAD
Our everyday interactions, whether with our children, partner, or colleagues, present opportunities to lead. Individual leadership moments take the form of influencing decisions, acting as a mentor, or directing a business venture. The ability to harness the power of interpersonal relationships by understanding the dynamic of a particular interaction and then making a deliberate choice about how the interaction should be managed is the hallmark of the method described in this book. Each of the seven skills will help you build on this understanding and capability, which is critical in developing a leader who is not driven by agenda, but embodies the precepts of the authentic leader. These leadership moments will culminate in an environment that is adaptable, supportive, and emotionally stable. Leaders from the shop floor to the boardroom can create a toxic or nontoxic work environment through their day-to-day interactions, resulting in either dissonance and poor results or an enthusiastic environment with records of high performance.[1]
Everyday leaders are “quiet leaders,” according to Joseph Badaracco, who suggests that each day in all organizations, a million seemingly inconsequential decisions are made by these individuals who ultimately reinforce and strengthen a work system’s efficacy. Quiet leaders balance the desire for productivity with a basic trust in humanity, using the character qualities of restraint, modesty, and tenacity in the interactions with others. Similarly, management expert Jerry Useem, in Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win, suggests that everyday leaders use the qualities of determination, fortitude, and perseverance to add value to the work environment and to exercise effective pursuit of the greater good.[2] The skills you will be introduced to in this book create quiet leaders, who are able to confront, analyze, and work through any business challenge and in the process further develop the traits noted above.
If we want to see the results of strong leadership within any work system, we have to let leadership float among all workers. Nearly everyone can lead, whether an entry-level agent or employee, a productive sales advisor, or a vice-president negotiating financial arrangements for the company. Anyone can uniquely position themselves to practice leadership and, through role modeling that creates a safe place for others to lead, they can then develop other leaders.
This book challenges the assumption that only a few can lead and the rest must merely follow. It illustrates the powerful organization-wide impact of everyday leaders. Moreover, the book offers the most important lesson for leaders: the value of learning through leading. It provides an understanding of the essential and practical interpersonal skills needed to practice everyday leadership to be a quiet leader. Although these skills are primarily used in one-on-one interactions, they also are effective in group interactions and even within the larger organizational system. This book provides a new mental model for who or what is a leader, so that the opportunity to practice the precepts of leadership extends to all individuals.
[1] Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee (2002)
[2] Useem (2001)
