The Trend Towards Greater Leadership Development Within Companies

In the past, companies maintain their office machines better than their employees. Today, however, the most forward-looking corporations are all into leadership development. This shift in perspective on people had actually been triggered by the long-term shift itself of the world economy. From a total dependence on financial capital, economies all over are now dependent on human capital.

Human resources

In the midst of economic upswings and downswings, companies have realized that money for investment is a precious commodity. Even in the middle of the present economic crunch, money had been deposed as the number one scarce resource in business. Human talent, however, is now the scarcer commodity. As the CEO of a top recruiting company says, “Organizations need talented people a lot more than talented people need organizations.”

Companies of a feather

There is now a growing trend of companies that developed their people with opportunities to learn and grow to become higher-performing organizations. A closer look at these companies reveals a striking resemblance of their practices. Operating all kinds of businesses and based from all over the world, these organizations share similar traits in creating leadership development programs.

Time and money investment

To cut to the chase, running leadership development programs is expensive – both in money and time. CEOs, however, think that this is “the single best investment” they make in their company. Many companies claim they are all interested in developing leaders. Today, most of the companies evaluate their own executives partly on how they develop people.

Promising leaders’ early identification

Spotting promising leaders early on can result in their earlier development. Some companies who have internship programs use the time the interns spend with them to evaluate their potential. Companies who nurture their future leaders early on believe that they have a competitive edge. Their talent reserves become bigger and better than the others.

Strategic assignment choices

In a typical leadership development process, two-thirds of the candidates come from job experience, one-third from mentoring and coaching and a smattering come straight from classrooms.

Mixing job assignments are tough, even if they looked okay at first. Organizations tend to assign people based on what they are good at, and not on what they need to work on. Managers have consistently reported that their hardest experiences were the most helpful in the end.

Developing leaders on the job

There is tension among the CEOs who want to develop their people by moving them about in their need to develop leaders in their expertise in certain areas. Other companies solve it by leaving their leaders in their exact productive places and having them rotated in other jobs through short-term work assignments. These leaders do not leave their present positions, but they can take on short additional assignments.

Feedback and support

In learning, if you do not know how you have performed, chances are you will not learn at all and may not care later. In some companies, feedback is rare. Many successful CEOs declared that frequent and honest assessment with plenty of mentoring and support has propelled them to the top.

All in all, companies now view leadership development as a real investment venture, albeit in human forms, rather than in cold forms of machines made of metal. Investing in creating “knowledge workers” is the wave of the future.

For more information on developing leadership skills for great productivity and profitability, visit: Charisma

What Effect Does Charismatic Leadership Have on Productivity Management?

One of the challenges researchers have expressed about the charismatic leadership model is the inability to measure the factors that make this model effective. For example, how do you measure inspiration?  How to you measure loyalty to a mission? In the long run, these factors weigh heavily on the productivity of followers and employees.  Although the charismatic leadership model’s effectiveness is intangible, like any leadership model, it has to have quantifiable measures in place.  

At present, there had been numerous productivity measurement techniques used by different groups of people for different purposes and reasons. These techniques had been developed for different applications, too.  There is need, therefore, to combine and unify these differing views and techniques. Basically, this is simply to be able to come up with a better and more comprehensive understanding of the concept of productivity.  However, in discussing productivity, different authors had allocated the use in different ways such terms as “measurement”, “evaluation”, “performance”, “improvement”, and “productivity”. Let us re-introduce them.

Performance

Strictly speaking, productivity is interpreted as output divided by input (O/I). This is because it is easily defined, calculated and implemented.  Performance, however, is a broader term than productivity because it includes such factors as quality, customer satisfaction and worker morale. These are not easily quantified.  Their inclusion into the calculations makes them more difficult, makes them fuzzy, and dilutes the clarity of the measurements.

Productivity

Again, strictly speaking, measurements are numerical indexes. Productivity measurement is one. It is expected that the same inputs should produce the same outputs – a number factor.  One advantage of this is the fact that the index does not depend on who collected the data or when it was collected.

Evaluation and measurement

Measurement is the methodology of establishing the amount of work involved in a work function. Evaluation is using measurements that are not strictly quantitative. It makes use of such measures as good, bad, poor, superior, fast and others.  The use of qualitative measures makes the manipulation of the data difficult, although it allows the inclusion of previously unmeasured work aspects. It is hoped that the application of fuzzy mathematics to such terms may make them useful someday.

Productivity improvement

This is the change sought, noted, or measured in productivity. It can also refer to the designed change to produce positive changes in the measured productivity. The term also refers to the change in productivity that had resulted from such design change. 

Resistance

Historically, productivity measurement systems are almost always not welcome to managers and workers alike. The strongest objection to measurement of knowledge worker productivity is inaccuracy of the results.  This productivity measurement is very valuable as a dynamic gauge, not a static measure. What this means is that since these inaccuracies are consistent, the dynamic measure will be an accurate indicator of the relative change.  However, managers assume that the exercise is not that important and a useless measure for the simple reason that it is not that accurate.

The expectation of workers is another tall hurdle in implementing productivity measures. In the past, productivity efforts were detailed and highly organized, very structured and well-documented.  Productivity measures of knowledge work are more loosely structured and less accurate than the measures of other types of work. People are always reluctant to accept anything less structured and less accurate.

Suggested solutions

In the past, knowledge work has been exempted from productivity evaluations because of complexity. It also has some costs.  To offset this mindset, authors and experts suggest preparing the work area and the people involved.  A big part of managing these productivity programs includes discussions, group participation, and self-evaluation. The latter is where charismatic leaders thrive. If employees are encouraged to communicate openly and honestly as well as participate in formulating initiatives, productivity will increase.  When committed employees are productive and innovative, profits also increase.  A logical correlation can be made with the effectiveness of charismatic leaders to fuse creative inspiration with high productivity and profitability.

For more information on developing the charismatic leadership skills to spark productivity and innovation within your organization, visit: Charisma

Leadership Is Action... Not Position

People respond to good leadership! Period! It is in all aspects of our lives, not just business.  A mother is a leader in her home; a son may be leader of a team sport or a daughter the leader of the debate team. A group relies on the person in charge to actually lead them to success. A true leader is highly ethical, honest and respected.

In our society we have leaders and followers.  Are we born to one or the other? No! Can you hone your leadership skills? Absolutely!

The leaders that I admire seem to have all of these in place:

a) They think BIG! They don’t put a ceiling in place.  Instead, no limit is set as to how big or how much better something can be.

b) The goals are firmly set in place and the eye does not come off of it.

c) They make known to all involved the final product that they are all going for, example, if you sell widgets, it takes x number of widgets to be affluent, or you want to win that football game and ultimately the title.  Know what you’re going for.

d) They can get compliance to orders.

e) When goals are met they set new goals or raise the bar.  People will follow your lead willingly if you are honest, ethical, if you are consistent and treat them with respect.  Rewarding someone when a job is well done is always appreciated.  A good leader will also dismiss someone who consistently hinders the group or just not a team player.

You can improve your own self- respect and become an inspiration to others. How great is that!

For more information on developing your leadership skills, visit: Charisma

Charismatic Leaders are Monomaniacal, Relentless & Focused in Changing the World

The late business guru, Peter Drucker, noted that successful innovation revealed a unique story usually about a monomaniac consumed by a challenge (Flaherty, 1999).  Drucker was not specifically speaking about charismatic leaders, but the commonality is eerily similar. Drucker’s analysis of this fearless leader, who goes against the norm and is iconoclastic in his desire to shatter the limitations of conventional wisdom, is the foundation of this style of leadership.  This brand of leadership does not listen to the roar of the crowd and insists on proving an idea correct despite overwhelming criticism.  Pundits can attribute traits such as extreme confidence, relentlessness, and steel determination to charismatic leaders. But, what spurs this level of insanity from these individuals and what can be learned by others who fall prey to the roar of the crowd? 

Entertainers Will Smith and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs repeatedly note in interviews that their success hinged on an insatiable desire to succeed. Combs actually referred to his ambition as “insane.” The late Steve Jobs suggested that “insanity” was a prerequisite for phenomenal success. Jobs articulated that the time, attention, and hard work it takes to achieve high levels of success would naturally cause the normal person to give up.  This purported insanity allows individuals to lead breakthroughs in traditional markets and innovations within new markets. So, how could the average individual adopt the monomaniacal and insane traits of charismatic leaders?

There are several strategies that average individuals can achieve in the vein of charismatic leaders.

1.       Have a deep, burning desire for acclaim and distinction. The insatiable desire by charismatic leaders to overcome insurmountable odds developed from an early childhood desire to be significant.  Early experiences stemming from abandonment, isolation, or mere low self-esteem sparked imagination in the mind and heart of the budding charismatic leader.  For individuals devoid of these life-altering experiences, build a desire from something of general interest and let it consume you. Revisit your childhood and determine what interest or idea has persisted within you, but was placed in the background out of a sense of being a “responsible adult.” Charismatic leaders follow this idea as if their life depended on it.

2.       Become a voracious reader and use history as a template for transformation. William Duggan in his book “The Art of What Works: How Success Really Happens” suggested that if a concept or strategy worked in the past, with some tweaking, it will work again in the present. The Biblical Solomon’s proclamation to the world that there is nothing new under the sun is prescient for Duggan’s analysis. Shakespeare said that he made new words out of old words. Charismatic leaders study the biographies, strategies, and tactics of historical figures to conquer new territory that change old systems of thought and operations. By becoming a voracious reader on subject matter pertinent to your ideas, you can begin imprinting your impression on the world.

3.       Dream big and spend large chunks of time in isolation.  Although charismatic leaders are viewed as “People Persons,” they create and develop many of their ideas in isolation.  Thomas Edison spent an inordinate amount of time in his laboratory before inventing the incandescent light bulb.  In Dean Keith Simonton’s “Greatness: Who Makes History and Why,” Simonton noted that Albert Einstein professed that his work did not lend itself to social interaction.  Einstein Reportedly said, “I am a horse with a single harness, not cut for tandem or teamwork…for well I know that in order to attain any definite goal, it is imperative that one person should be thinking and commanding (p. 388).  

4.       Use current technology to lead. Charismatic leaders become an army of one before the rest of the population has caught on to an idea.  Twenty-two year old Molly Katchpole started an online petition against Bank of America (BOF) after discovering that BOF would begin charging a $5 monthly fee on debit card transactions.  After a month, 306,000 people signed Katchpole’s petition causing BOF to reverse its decision to levy the monthly fee. The Internet and social media have allowed individuals to lead crusades that would have required enormous human capital once upon a time. Start a blog, petition, or Facebook page on an important issue that you and others are passionate about and become the vanguard for change.

5.       Document your work. Charismatic leaders reflect on their achievements by documenting the challenges and triumphs of their feats for future generations to follow. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote the book, “The Prince,” to advise leaders how acquire and maintain political power. “The Prince” is required reading for world leaders as well as students of Political Science interested in political theory. “The Prince” has remained relevant for over five hundred years.  As you develop strategies and tactics for changing the world, keep a journal of your process to serve as a tutorial for those who aspire to pick up where you left off.

Changing or influencing the world is an arduous task. However, by emulating the transformational strategies and tactics of charismatic leaders, you too can make a lasting impression on the world stage.

Related: Charisma

Reference

Flaherty, J.E. (1999). Peter Drucker: Shaping the managerial mind, how the foremost management thinker crafted the essential of business success. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.