Business models have greatly improved to adapt other societal elements like leadership. The essence of leadership cannot be undermined by any society or organization. No matter how small, a group of people look-up to some persons or the other to show the way forward. In a home, the wife looks to he husband and children look to their parents. In the larger societies, government and other opinion leaders enjoy this responsibility.
It is common to associate business with management. Managers do not only manage scarce resources, they are also saddled with the responsibility of showing a direction, focus, coaching and mentoring. These are shared attributes that both leaders and managers share. A business venture is usually profit driven and business owners must learn and use various strategies to achieve this major objective. To show direction and get people to support a process, people have to be involved. A manager without soft skills will end-up doing the whole work, use force to get things done, waste more time and other scarce resources or achieve poor results. Leadership is that unseen arm of the manager that supports internal processes by motivating those who drive the process.
A good leader breeds others, the same for a good manager. He uses skills, methodologies and proactively designed strategies to motivate people to move in agreement with a common vision. He helps those with alternative views shape and fine-tunes them to work in consonance with the common goal. These help him to get more done in less time, saving resources. In his days at General Electric, Jack Welch adopted a leadership approach to management and this was made evident in GE’s fortunes, achievements and many praises. Organizations that use this model have since given-up thinking along the lines of “I am the boss”. While I do not support delegation without feedback, it is my opinion that people be assigned responsibilities and be mentored to succeed. Many thanks to thinkers whose managerial styles are changing the landscape of organizational cultures, their achievements are been built on by those they painstakingly mentored and coached through the processes. Through Knowledge Management, organizations now understand that employees are not just a necessary “must haves”, but also a great contribution to an organization’s knowledge capital asset.
Leaders identify and build on people’s potential realizing that they do not have eternity to spend in a workplace. Smart leaders reproduce themselves in others. While good managers may not make good leaders, good leaders are sure to make excellent managers because the ability to see beyond business resources and profit. In a bid to show leadership at business levels, employees are offered the opportunity to partner, lead project teams, make contributions at senior management levels, seat in and observe meeting proceedings, mentored and coached, or even head new business units. Leadership as an art can be learned and put into daily activities.
It is usually refreshing for a father to watch his son grow and become a man. That is the feeling of a leader. Even in the midst of “destructive innovation”, a leader still tolerates a level of excess. Senior management at Motorola could not have exhibited leadership better by allowing a team of young innovative business oriented engineers and developers to research, design and launch the RAZR phones. The story of breakthrough innovation is not complete without a leadership success story.
Today, I advocate that leadership be taught at every level of our lives. This does not only help us to be better managers at business levels, it also help us to motivate people to work at their best potential levels so that undesired waste can be minimized. A system that is not performing at a maximal level only generates waste.
It is common to associate business with management. Managers do not only manage scarce resources, they are also saddled with the responsibility of showing a direction, focus, coaching and mentoring. These are shared attributes that both leaders and managers share. A business venture is usually profit driven and business owners must learn and use various strategies to achieve this major objective. To show direction and get people to support a process, people have to be involved. A manager without soft skills will end-up doing the whole work, use force to get things done, waste more time and other scarce resources or achieve poor results. Leadership is that unseen arm of the manager that supports internal processes by motivating those who drive the process.
A good leader breeds others, the same for a good manager. He uses skills, methodologies and proactively designed strategies to motivate people to move in agreement with a common vision. He helps those with alternative views shape and fine-tunes them to work in consonance with the common goal. These help him to get more done in less time, saving resources. In his days at General Electric, Jack Welch adopted a leadership approach to management and this was made evident in GE’s fortunes, achievements and many praises. Organizations that use this model have since given-up thinking along the lines of “I am the boss”. While I do not support delegation without feedback, it is my opinion that people be assigned responsibilities and be mentored to succeed. Many thanks to thinkers whose managerial styles are changing the landscape of organizational cultures, their achievements are been built on by those they painstakingly mentored and coached through the processes. Through Knowledge Management, organizations now understand that employees are not just a necessary “must haves”, but also a great contribution to an organization’s knowledge capital asset.
Leaders identify and build on people’s potential realizing that they do not have eternity to spend in a workplace. Smart leaders reproduce themselves in others. While good managers may not make good leaders, good leaders are sure to make excellent managers because the ability to see beyond business resources and profit. In a bid to show leadership at business levels, employees are offered the opportunity to partner, lead project teams, make contributions at senior management levels, seat in and observe meeting proceedings, mentored and coached, or even head new business units. Leadership as an art can be learned and put into daily activities.
It is usually refreshing for a father to watch his son grow and become a man. That is the feeling of a leader. Even in the midst of “destructive innovation”, a leader still tolerates a level of excess. Senior management at Motorola could not have exhibited leadership better by allowing a team of young innovative business oriented engineers and developers to research, design and launch the RAZR phones. The story of breakthrough innovation is not complete without a leadership success story.
Today, I advocate that leadership be taught at every level of our lives. This does not only help us to be better managers at business levels, it also help us to motivate people to work at their best potential levels so that undesired waste can be minimized. A system that is not performing at a maximal level only generates waste.
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