Beginning with a leader who has a vision for an organization and an understanding of customer requirements, leadership is the first component of a successful performance excellence system.  

Organizations tend to move in the direction the people perceive as important to the leaders.  Why?  While there are many theories and little agreement on what exemplary leadership is, it consists of three dimensions; direction, governance, and organizational performance   review.

Leadership is developed…not discovered. Top leaders must consistently promote high performance, set clear values and directions, and communicate effectively to make sure all employees understand their responsibilities.  The most successful leaders present a strong future orientation and a commitment to  improvement, innovation, and the disciplined change needed to carry it out.  This requires creating an environment for empowerment, learning, innovation, and organizational agility, as well as the means for rapid and effective application of knowledge.  Empowerment relates to giving employees more authority over decisions about their work.  Agility relates to eliminating barriers and unnecessary control gates that bureaucracies and insecure leaders put in place.  Unnecessary levels of review and approval make agility impossible.  

To be successful and sustain that success, leaders must commit to developing the organization’s future leaders and to the reward and recognition of employee performance consistent with the principles of your organization.  They personally participate in the development of future leaders, and integrate that development into the organizations succession planning.   Leaders must ensure that organizational values actually guide the behavior of employees throughout the organization or the values are meaningless. 

Leaders must ensure two way communication with subordinates and other employees, key suppliers, and partners regarding organizational values, directions and expectations.  Two way communication fosters feedback from employees about leadership effectiveness.   Leaders must also foster good governance and social responsibility.  How your organization practices effective governance, meets is legal and ethical responsibilities to the public, and practices good citizenship is critical in sustaining trust and integrity with all customers, employees and stakeholders.        

Everyone is a leader, will be a leader, can be a leader and should be a leader.

Growing leadership requires that we explore ourselves, and learn to work with others, but most importantly, learn to integrate the right tools and techniques, with the right people, for the right task, at the right time. 

This is the magic of leadership!
Leadership has been defined as many things, by many people.   Some of the definitions that we found since we began our journey to performance excellence are:

“Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and motivate a group of people”.

“Leadership is the blending of rational (reason) and emotional (feeling) components in order to create an environment in which others are able to self-actualize in the process of completing the job”.

“Leadership is described by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Program as the individuals in your organization who are responsible to set and communicate the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and focuses on the need to create and sustain a high performance organization”.

Author John C. Maxwell believes that all leaders fall into one of four different categories.  They are “The Leading Leader”, “The Learned Leader”, “The Latent Leader”, and “The Limited Leader”.

Beginning with the Leading Leader, this person is born with leadership qualities.  This person has seen leadership modeled throughout his/her life and has learned added leadership through training.  This person also has the self discipline to become a great leader.

The Learned Leader has also seen leadership modeled throughout most of his/her life and has learned leadership through training.  This person also has the self discipline to be a great leader.

The Latent Leader has just recently seen leadership modeled and is learning to become a great leader.  This person also has the self discipline required to become a great leader.

And lastly, the Limited Leader.  This person has had no exposure to leadership and has had little to no exposure to leadership training.  This type of person has no desire to become a leader.

There seems to be some confusion between the definition of a manager and a leader.  John W. Gardner, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare directed a leadership study in Washington, DC and pointed out five characteristics that set “leaders” apart from “managers”.  They are:

• Leaders are long-term thinkers who see beyond the day’s crises and the quarterly report. 

• Leaders’ interests in their companies do not stop with the units they manage.  They seek to know all of the company’s departments, how they interact with one another, and how they are constantly reaching beyond their specific areas of influence.

• Leaders put heavy emphasis on vision, values, and motivation.

• Leaders don’t accept the status quo.

• Management is the process of making sure that the program and objectives of the organization are implemented.  Leadership on the other hand, has to do with casting vision and motivating people.

People don’t want to be managed…
They want to be led!

After observing leadership for more than four decades, author John C. Maxwell also believes that “Leadership is Influence”.  Nothing more, nothing less!

As you explore the concepts of leadership, keep in mind these few insights…

• Everyone influences someone.

• We never know who or how much we influence.

• The best investment in the future is a proper influence today.

• Influence is a skill that can be developed.

Jot down the names of five people you lead.  Then jot down the names of five people you follow.

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Great leadership is critical in all organizations.  Your leadership can make or break you as a company.  Do your leaders lead…or manage?  Gem can show you how creating great leaders has helped to generate millions of dollars in revenue and how their critical role within the company is achieved.  Attend a seminar and learn how we created out FOCUS 500™ Program all the techniques on how to implement your own leadership system.