Leadership

How can you be a better leader?

A leader must have a clear idea of where he or she wants to go — and the ability to motivate people to go in that direction. Good leadership starts inside yourself, with a frank assessment of your strengths and weaknesses in dealing with people.

Professor Jim Fisher on Leadership

What’s the difference between managing and leading?

Managing just has to do with making sure the mechanics all work.You’ve got a plan, and people know what the plan is.They’re organized, so people know what their job is to make that plan work.Then you have control systems to make sure it happens and you take corrective action. It’s the mechani­cal side of making something happen.

Leading is about having a sense of why we’re bothering to do all this stuff, why it’s a good idea and why people should put energy into it. A good leader has a sense of where he or she wants to go and can articulate that vision in a way that people can relate to.

Great leaders come in all shapes and sizes.There isn’t a particular type.There are great speakers and poor speakers, nice people and nasty people.There’s a wide range of people who are effective as leaders. The only thing we know about leaders is that they do have tremendous empathy skills.They understand people – what motivates people and how to use that moti­vation to get what they want from people. They sense what people want and need and react to, without asking them. And they have great personal control over their own persona, so they manage themselves in such a way as to get the most out of people.

Leaders are people who have two big things going for them: one, they’re people who want to do something, and two, they can get people to follow them where they want to go.To be a great leader, you need both.

The dangerous people are those with­out a sense of where they want to go, people who have great empathy but are horrible managers.They build people’s hopes and dreams, but if people aren’t organized, nothing happens. It’s a terrible thing for people to have the sense that something wonderful is going to happen, and then have their hopes constantly dashed.To be effective, you have to be both a good leader and a good manager.