Business Development Interactive Web Portal.

“Leadership is influence.”
- John Maxwell

There is a difference between leadership and management. You may be a workplace manager, but not necessarily a workforce leader. You may even have supervisory responsibility of employees, but that doesn’t automatically make you a leader.

Leaders differ with managers in that they posses and practice qualities that allow them to succeed in motivating people. They don’t just manage projects; they lead people in the accomplishment of those projects.

So if you want to transform your workplace management role into successful workforce leadership results, consider incorporating these ten qualities into your work:

Organizations need leaders with vision and the ability to align and inspire their teams. Such leaders can make the impossible happen by transforming their organizations.

Freud identified three main personality types, including the erotic, the obsessive and the narcissistic. Each of these types is motivated by different driving forces. The erotic is motivated most by being loved by others. These individuals are outward focused. They are often “…caring and supportive, but they avoid conflict and make people dependent on them” (Maccoby, p. 95). Obsessives are inner directed, striving for order and effectiveness.

Maximizing the potential of people and organizations is my passion. During the course of the past several years I have had the opportunity to serve as a management consultant and corporate trainer to hundreds of organizations worldwide. Working with these organizations in the areas of leadership development, strategic planning, and performance improvement, I have been afforded a unique perspective of how companies in many distinct industries operate. What I have found is that regardless of the size of the organization, from small “ma and pa shops” to multi-national corporations, there are specific characteristics that clearly differentiate “Great” companies.

Some in the business community would argue that so-called “touchy-feely” leadership qualities such as treating people with respect, displaying fairness and communicating openly and honestly with them is nice and everything, but it doesn’t directly impact the bottom line.

I was reminded just how wrong those of that mind are during a phone call I made a few weeks ago to an employee in the PR department of the company I wanted to profile as this month’s Success Story, Texas-based Rackspace Managed Hosting.

I. Questions to ask

As business owners or managers we must be asking ourselves:

“How well are we improving things within our own responsibilities?” “Are we communicating, co-ordinating, motivating, delegating better today than we were yesterday?” “How are we going to improve it tomorrow?”

The whole concept of continuous improvement is not about us or them, we are in it together and we must lead the way or it will not happen.

II. Future Businesses

Leadership is an apprentice trade. You learn some of it in the classroom and from books. You learn most if it on the job. You learn it from others and you learn from experience. Here’s how to get the most out of what you learn on the job.

Improve your Odds of Getting it Right the First Time

Get some training in supervisory skills. Classroom training and reading can give you ideas of how to analyze situations and what practices to try. They can be the basis for your on-the-job experiments in leadership.

Just as there are many requirements in mentoring, there are just as many rewards. We frequently speak of the personal and intrinsic qualities that mentors bring to their relationships and the value of those qualities. The simple truth is that not everyone can be an effective mentor. The sharing of knowledge and experience are only two of the transactions that take place in a mentoring relationship. A mentor must also share vision, spirit, humor, mission, and wisdom that are only a short laundry list of essentials of mentorship. But one requirement that frequently is overlooked is the time investment a mentor must make to their partner.

There is no one-thing that makes a sales leader great. But, there is definitely one thing that can make them poor - an inability to coach and develop their employees.

Tell a salesperson to go sell and he will struggle for a day, teach him how to sell and he will sell for life. Ok, so that is not exactly how the quote goes, but you get my point.

At one time sales management started and finished with “this is your desk, this is your phone, this is the yellow pages, go get ‘em”. This may have worked many years ago, but today customers are more sophisticated, markets are more competitive and expectations for ramping-up are shorter.

Change is never easy; it is in our human nature to resist change - whatever the cause. However, despite this fact, many organizations have managed to overcome the barriers to change and have adopted new models for not only leadership styles, but many other organizational processes as well (Nahavandi, 2003). As you might have already identified, one of the most difficult models to change is moving from a typical hierarchical or autocratic style of management to a more democratic or team-oriented style of leadership. However, the key to effective organizational change is a sound change management process (Dudink & Berge, 2006). Part of that change management process, is also preparing your business for a new shift in leadership methods and requires that the organization build a team-oriented culture - starting from the top and communicating down (Rosenburg, 2001). Managers at all levels must identify and leverage each person’s top skills, and create sound value-based communications between team members (Dudink & Berge, 2006).

What causes people to make unethical choices when they know it is wrong? Ask someone who has stolen money – did you ever think of yourself as a thief? Their answer is always a resounding – No! Yet, their unethical choices tend to lead them to disastrous consequences.

As a Motivational Speaker, no matter how much I share my story, people continue making unethical choices. What really saddens me is to watch people I know enter into ethical dilemmas after all I experienced and all that I share. I certainly do not withhold sharing my story, believing that telling my story helps other people.