LEADERSHIP SKILLS

Throughout my life, I have been inspiring individuals to become a voice in their community and create change. While I believed my leadership skills were well tuned, I am a lifelong learner and wanted to expand my knowledge on leadership development. My problem was that I was newly married, welcomed my son into the world and started a new job. No way was I going to have the time needed to go back to school. This is where my thinking all changed. I started to research graduate programs, learning toward an MBA because that is what I was told to get to work in the business community. While conducting my research on graduate schools and programs, I discovered a school in Nebraska named Bellevue University that had an interesting degree in Leadership. My degree opened my eyes to new and exciting leadership development skills. I took these skills and started my own organization working with individuals to develop strong leadership skills. My passion is to make positive change in the world by developing individuals to change their own community. Regardless of your aspirations, becoming a better leader is sure to pave the way. To become a great leader, a person needs to utilize all the resources available to expand their knowledge. Leadership lessons are all around us and can be learned from watching movies, reading books and from our peers. The following 10 steps will get you on your way for a successful career and fulfilling life: 1. Reflect on yourself: Who are you? What do you stand for? How do you want to influence others? Formulate a concrete vision of yourself and start living your life as the leader who makes your vision a reality. 2. Understand your base: Find out what people think about your style of leadership. This could be a real eye opener, and the key to making changes to the way you influence others. Conduct a 360 evaluation of yourself from your peers, supervisors and friends. 3. Trust and Empower: An integral part of becoming a great leader is to gain creative followers, and this includes learning to respect your teams capabilities by delegating tasks. Leaders know that nobody does their best if they feel weak, incompetent or alienated; they know that those who are expected to produce the results must feel a sense of ownership. 4. Venture out: Leaders dont sit idly by waiting for fate to smile upon them. They seek and accept challenges. Leaders are pioneers who are willing to step out into the unknown. They are willing to take risks, innovate, and experiment to find new and better ways of doing things. 5. Lead by example: Take the opportunity to learn about your followers and expand on where they want to go with their career. Take time to mentor others and demonstrate effective business ethics. 6. Set definitive goals: Know where your destination is and then map out a plan to get there. To improve your leadership skills, first set specific life goals with realistic timelines. Develop action plans that will provide direction toward your goals.

7. Maintain a positive attitude: People are naturally attracted to you when you have a positive attitude. Just because you made a mistake does not mean it is a mistake. A great leader will look for opportunities to improve and grow as a person. 8. Create effective communication skills: Having great leadership skills includes being able to clearly and specifically communicate your vision, goals, skills, intentions, and expectations to others. A great communicator will continually strive to improve their verbal, nonverbal, and listening skills. 9. Be willing to admit failures and weaknesses: No one is perfect. Great leaders surround themselves with people that will fill in their own weaknesses. The most successful leaders know that the key to success is not avoiding failure, but learning from their mistakes. 10. Become a lifelong learner: Great leaders continue to improve themselves in every possible way. Life is filled with opportunities to learn and expand your knowledge. Take the time to continue your path of excellence. About the Author: Troy Lum is founder and president of Wired2Lead and a proud graduate of Bellevue Universitys Master of Arts in Leadership program. He works to develop leadership skills with businesses large and small. With support from his wife, he found the commitment, time, and cost of pursuing additional education opened new doors. At Bellevue University, he found a program that provided him with the tools and resources to work around his life.

1. Have a clear vision of yourself, others, and the world. Who are you? What do you stand for? What is your life purpose? How do you want to influence others? How do you want to contribute to yourself, your family, friends, colleagues, and the world? Answer these questions to formulate a concrete vision of yourself and your world. Then, start living your life as the leader who makes your vision a reality! 2. Know and utilize your strengths and gifts. You have unique gifts that you were born with and personal strengths youve developed over your lifetime. Realizing and utilizing these gifts and strengths will assist you in being a formidable leader. 3. Live in accordance with your morals and values. Making choices and taking actions out of accordance with your morals and values leaves you with a nagging Bad feeling. This feeling seeping in from your subconscious mind hinders your success in your career and your relationships. On the other hand, making choices and taking actions aligned with your morals and values helps you succeed almost effortlessly. People sense integrity and will naturally respect your opinion and leadership. 4. Lead others with inclusiveness and compassion.

The greatest leaders are those who include everyone in their sphere of influence by recognizing each persons greatest value. To be one of these leaders, look beyond the obvious and see others with insight and compassion. Many of history's greatest leaders have admitted that they rose to the top because another leader recognized and harnessed their potential. 5. Set definitive goals and follow concrete action plans. You have to know where your destination is before you can map out a plan to get there. To improve your leadership skills, first set specific life goals with appropriate timelines. Design your goals by moving backwards from the end of your life to the present week. Then, formulate action plans you can commit to that will get you to where you want to be. 6. Maintain a positive attitude. No one respects a grumpy or negative person. With a positive attitude you are looking at the bright side of life. People are naturally attracted to you when you have a positive attitude. By being positive, you will lead a happier life, as well as be surrounded by other positive people. You will also magically attract exciting offers and possibilities. 7. Improve communication skills. Having great leadership skills includes your being able to clearly and specifically communicate your vision, goals, skills, intentions, and expectations to others. This also includes your ability to listen to what other people are consciously or unconsciously communicating. To become a great communicator, continually strive to improve your verbal, nonverbal, and listening skills. 8. Motivate others to greatness. A leader is as powerful as his team. As a leader, you will want to surround yourself with a powerful team by assisting others in recognizing and utilizing their strengths, gifts, and potential. Motivating others to their own greatness will improve the group energy, increase the vitality of your projects, and move you forward toward achieving your goals and vision. 9. Be willing to admit and learn from failures and weaknesses. Face it No one is perfect, and everyone has made a mistake or two in their lives! The most successful leaders know that the key to success is not in avoiding falling or failing, but to learn from their mistakes. As a strong leader, you will also be able to communicate your weaknesses to your team, so that you and your team can appoint someone who excels at that particular task or activity. 10. Continue to educate and improve yourself.

Great leaders continue to improve themselves in every possible way. The person who thinks he is an expert, has a lot more to learn. Never stop learning. Be receptive to everyones perceptions and information from around the world and beyond. Grow.grow.grow.learn.learn.learn...

Improving Your Leadership Skills

The role of leadership and supervision in American business is gaining increasing recognition. Just as society looks for a leader to define its purpose and lead it forward, business is concerned with the selection and development of people who can successfully invent, make, sell and provide services to set their enterprise apart from its competition and solve the many perplexing problems that confront them. Management techniques of the last several decades -- management by objectives, diversification, zero-based budgeting, value chain analysis, decentralization, centralization, quality circles, restructuring, management by "walking around" etc. -have not had the significant, long lasting affect that some of the tried and true, but often forgotten, strategies of supervision can offer. One fundamental change in the strategy of managing in today's environment is the concept of coaching rather than managing. Many businesses have rightly redesigned their work flow around processes. These processes enable the creation of process teams, in other words, a person or group responsible for an entire business process. Team supervision, commonly referred to as coaching, demands more education than training. The difference is execution. Training generally implies learning the skills necessary to perform a particular function. Training someone in the art of collections becomes very focused on that function. However, education expands the scope of the collection function to understand the role of cash flow to the business, the impact on sales and marketing, and the relationship of collection to the credit extension philosophy. Training teaches skills, education teaches the job. There are several strategies found useful in the art of successful leadership and supervision. Self Esteem When you make someone feel important, you gain their willingness to work for you. Here are some techniques to improve self esteem:

Ask their advice. Even though you may feel you have the answers to a problem, ask for their help. This makes the employee feel that you think their opinion is worth considering. Remember the name of the person you are dealing with, and use it often in your conversation. Remember the most important thing to a person is their name. Discuss subjects; but do not argue about them. Arguing infers that you think the other person is wrong, therefore bringing the person down, and hurting their self esteem. Sincerely compliment them occasionally. You can surely find something to praise someone about. Be more willing to listen than to talk. Pay close attention, and show interest in what they are saying. Be interested in the person. Keep people well informed on all matters that may concern them. Show respect for a person's knowledge by repeating a remark of theirs that will reflect favorably on them.

Become a Good Listener Generally people do not know how to be good listeners. People usually only remember about half of the information they are told. Below are some points on becoming a good listener.

Be ready to listen. Stay alert in your posture and in your facial expression. Try to avoid distractions. Eliminate bias in your thoughts about a person, otherwise you will never comprehend what they are saying. To ward off boredom, try to stay ahead of the speaker by anticipating what she may say next. Try to group thoughts or points to make it easier to remember. Look for key words in what the person is saying. It makes recalling the conversation easier.

Planning Planning is one of the key management tools. Certainly all of our companies have short, and long range plans. Through planning, we decide a course of action to achieve goals and accomplish objectives. Planning prepares us for how to perform in the event certain things happen.

Planning requires getting facts and data. The more information you can gather together, the better equipped you will be to make decisions. Policies and procedures are either originated or examined and brought up-todate when planning.

Objectives are also reviewed when a planning process is implemented. Planning helps to unify an organization by getting others involved. Change is accepted more easily when the plans are known throughout the organization. Planning brings attention to dangers or pitfalls. If the planning is thorough, disadvantage as well as advantages will be uncovered. Decision making skills of the staff can be strengthened, through proper planning. For instance, if several alternatives could be taken to solve a problem, a decision must be made as to which one will be carried out. Ask for thoughts and comments from the staff.

Motivating People at all levels must feel they are needed. You cannot motivate a person if they do not feel essential to the process. Ways to make a person feel needed:

Keep them informed. Challenge a person, thus allowing them to grow. Make them feel proud of the job they are doing. Praise the person. Let them know they are doing a good job. Learn what people want from their jobs. Individual or team recognition, routine tasks or constant challenges...know someone's likes and dislikes in order to be able to motivate them. Recognition is more important to some people than salary. People want to be given credit for a job well done. Make mention of special accomplishments of an employee (or even their family) even if it is an accomplishment outside of work.

Communication is the key to motivating. Listening (see prior note) is an important factor.

People like to know what is going on, and what to expect. Keep them informed. Have regular meetings to exchange thoughts and take the opportunity to advise them of what is going on around the company, with customers and in the industry.

Show enthusiasm about your work and that will help to set a work ethic thus motivating others.

Set goals for those you supervise. Also, help them achieve the goals by giving them the opportunity to get things done. Do not set unrealistic goals. Disciplining The art of dealing with people when they fail to do their job or they behave abnormally. The better you know an individual, the better job you can do of disciplining him. With some people, you need to be firm, or even demanding. Others, just a hint of a suggestion for change is all that is necessary. Here are a few strategies on making one of the most distasteful acts of supervision a little more palatable:

Try to discuss the situation as soon as possible after the incident. That way, the situation is fresh on everyone's mind. Usually, time only makes matters appear worse. Talk to the individual in private. Try not to let other people see or hear you. Don't embarrass the person Try to be friendly, and listen to the person tell their side of the story first. Weigh and decide the facts before you constructively discipline. Do not nag or harp on the subject over and over again. This will only cause irritation. Do not argue. Control your emotions and try to control the other persons'. Try to have the person see the seriousness of the situation, and why they should change their attitude or performance. Attempt to determine the reaction to your discipline. See if the individual feels they are being treated fairly. Try to get a commitment from them to do better in the future.

Handling Personality Problems--a very touchy situation.

People with personality problems are that way because of their strong emotive response to situations. Some people feel that everybody is against them. Some may be over-aggressive or even hostile, while others may be very submissive or dependent. How you handle such people determines whether these individuals become human relations problems of a higher level.

Here are some things to do and not to do when dealing with such situations:

Avoid becoming involved on an emotional level. This does not mean to ignore the individual, but rather to help them by doing all that you are responsible to do.

Emotional problems should be left to professional counseling. Delicately recommend professional help. DO NOT allow yourself, and discourage others from becoming emotionally involved with the person. This becomes very time consuming, and generally ends up affecting several people and has no positive effect.

Remember, misery loves company...do not become entangled in the problem

Try to help the person with a particularly strong personality trait by teaming them with compatible individuals. This may mean putting two aggressive people together, rather than a passive and a bold one. Sometimes however, it may be beneficial to put together an apprehensive person with a confident one. This may serve to mature the more apprehensive individual. Sometimes, you may have the opportunity to match a person's personality to a particular task, which may help to change their surroundings, and thus create a new emotional as well as physical outlook in their work environment. Often times, this will have a positive carry over into their home life.

Delegating A skill that really requires disciplining yourself that will in turn allow you to supervise better. How to make your job easier.

Could much of the work that you do be done by those you supervise? Do you frequently find yourself overloaded with detail work? Are you taking more and more work home with you at night? Are you working longer hours? Are those important jobs you are asked to do getting done just in time or a day or two late? Is too much of your time being spent on unimportant jobs? Have the things that you do become routine in nature?

If the answer to most of these questions is "yes," then maybe you have not yet adopted one of the KEY skills of managing, the art of delegation. This is particularly important if you have hopes of moving up in the organization. Your skill in delegating could be a major factor in deciding whether you can handle greater responsibilities and a greater job. A SUCCESSFUL LEADER gets things done through others.

Do not fall into the pitfalls of being fearful of delegation. Unwillingness to delegate may be a psychological problem involving fear.

Unfounded reasons for this are:

That credit for the job being done will go to someone else. That it will become known that others know more about a particular job than you do. That someone may do the job better that you have been doing.

Remember it is to your credit and it exhibits confidence in your skills as a supervisor to place competent people around you. Delegation is a requisite of good supervision. It supports trust and confidence in those you supervise and enables them to handle the tasks that will free you to do more important work.

Make it known that you are now doing more top level decision making and possibly researching new techniques and ideas to better the operation. Effective delegating requires proper planning and thought, and also proper follow-up.

Here are some suggestions for making delegation successful: 1. Understand the purpose of delegating. You have three basic objectives in delegating: a. Get the job done. b. Free yourself for other work. c. Have your "team" benefit by learning and experiencing what you have been doing. 2. Decide specifically what you can delegate. Generally delegate as much of your work as possible. Do yourself only what no one else can do. 3. Recognize that subordinates will make mistakes. Make sure they understand what they are to do. Be willing to take blame for mistakes that may be made. 4. Clarify what you are delegating. Agree on what the task is and how much "power" you are delegating to them to perform a particular job. Also, let others know of the arrangements so that proper cooperation will be extended to get the job done. 5. Most important, follow-up. Remember that although you have delegated responsibility and empowered others to get the job done, you still have the final accountability for the job. Ask your team for progress reports or discuss with them from time to time.

Empowerment This newer strategy may in-fact be the culmination of all the points above. Simply put, empowerment is delegation taken a step farther. In delegation, the supervisor is not only accountable for the results, but also assumes some responsibility since in most cases the delegated tasks most often are the job of the supervisor. Empowerment is the total, unmistakable passing on of responsibility to a person or team to accomplish a job or perform a process. As coach or supervisor, you maintain accountability for the overall outcome or results of the process. Empowerment brings with it a challenge for the organization to provide state-of-theart systems, education, tools and most importantly support to the team for maximum performance. Applying empowerment frequently shifts ownership of a function or process from a traditional supervisor to a group, and with that ownership transfer; pride, job satisfaction, motivation and creativity develop. Summary

Remember, you can be a great influence on the initiative and drive of those you coach or supervise. Be enthusiastic and continually look for ways to maintain morale, build confidence, and motivate. Be a good listener. Talking about a situation or a problem expands communication so that understanding is improved. Do a good job of planning and scheduling. Keep your team informed so they will understand their role in the organization and will tend not to be confused. Keep people busy. Generally, people would like to have too much to do than not enough to do. They lose self esteem if they are not kept busy, and then productivity falls off dramatically. Try to solve problems promptly. Letting bad situations go tends to only make them worse. Give people a chance to do their work without "annoying" them. Leave them alone unless they need you for something, and let them work. Provide the tools, environment and most importantly support for your team to perform at its peak. Show your human side. Demonstrate that you care about someone by visiting them when they are in the hospital or on extended sick leave. Wish someone a happy birthday. Remember their employment anniversary. Be fair. Do not favor people. Praise them when it is due and constructively criticize when it is due.

A supervisor or coach who loses contact with her team or group will fail. Therefore, it is important for any supervisor who is a leader to remember that he must maintain

close contact with the group if he is to function as a coach or supervisor. Many supervisors fail not because of limitations on their own general ability; but, on their inability to delegate, listen, plan, motivate, discipline, and empower.