Develop Your Leadership Skills

Develop Your Leadership Skills

Develop Your Leadership Skills

Introduction

Leadership skills have now been universally recognized as a key ingredient – some would say the key ingredient – in management. A good manager is now by definition a leader. Equally, a good leader will also be a manager. But how do you become such a leader? Is it possible to develop your own abilities as a leader? Let me answer that last question with a resounding YES. As for the first question, this whole book is my answer. It is a simple practical guide for anyone who is about to take up a team leadership role in any organization. But I hope that it will be equally useful for those already in such roles who wish to improve their basic leadership skills. If leadership matters to you, this book will give you a complete framework for becoming an effective leader.

Never Split the Difference Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

One word of caution: nobody can teach you leadership. It is something you have to learn. You learn principally from experience. But experience or practice has to be illuminated by principles or ideas. It is when the sparks jump between the two that learning happens. So you will have to think hard, relating what I say to your experience as you read and reflecting on it. As with everything else in life, the more you put into this joint.

Table of Content

Introduction

1 What you have to be 3

Some essential qualities 4
Generic leadership traits 5

2 What you have to know 9

3 What you need to do 15

Task need 16;
Team maintenance need 16;
Individual needs 17;
The three circles interact 18;
Towards the functional approach to leadership 18;
Your role as leader 19;
Leadership: personal reminder 21

4 How to turn the core leadership functions into skills

Defining the task 24;
Planning 27;
Briefing 30;
Controlling 32;
Evaluating 35;
Motivating 37;
Organizing 40;
Providing an example 45

5 How to develop yourself as a leader 51

Be prepared 52;
Be proactive 52;
Be reflective 53

6 How to lead at the strategic level 55

The functions of a strategic leader 55;
The importance of practical wisdom 57;
Leadership for desirable change 58

7 How to grow leaders in your organization

Principal one: develop a strategy for leadership development 62;
Principle two: selection 62;
Principle three: training for leadership 63;
Principle four: career development 64;
Principle five: line manager as leadership developers 65;
Principle six: culture 66;
Principle seven: the chief executive 66;
Finding greatness in people 67

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Develop Your Leadership Skills