Different qualities of a leader

A very interesting realization I have made is that on nearly each leadership coaching I have, there are a lot of different discussions about what leadership really is and what different qualities of leadership are there? Surly there will be so many different answer, some go in the direction that you are ether a leader or not (the born leader theory), which is basically not true. But the question remains what is a leader and or what makes a leader and what are some of the qualities?

 

Studies of leadership have suggested qualities that people often associate with leadership. They include:

·         The ability to get a vision of something or a vision of direction

·         A clear sense of purpose (or mission) - clear goals - focus - commitment

·         Charismatic inspiration - attractiveness to others and the ability to leverage this esteem to motivate others

·         Ability to encourage and nurture those that report to them - delegate in such a way as people will grow

·         Results-orientation - directing every action towards a mission - prioritizing activities to spend time where results most accrue

·         Preoccupation with a role - a dedication that consumes much of leaders' life - service to a cause

·         Cooperation - work well with others (this is a part of social competence)

·         Role models - leaders may adopt a persona that encapsulates their mission and lead by example (it should always be – do as I do, not only do as I say)

·         Technical/specific skill at some task at hand

·         Self-knowledge (in non-bureaucratic structures)

·         Self-awareness - the ability to "lead" (as it were) one's own self prior to leading other selves similarly (emotional intelligence competence)

·         Social-Competence (this has become a more and more demanding task in leadership)

·         Optimism - very few pessimists become leaders

·         Rejection of determinism - belief in one's ability to "make a difference" (your mindset, is in reality will make the difference)

 

I know we talk about traits, but in the end the end I would like you to think about what the Leadership business guru -David McClelland said about leadership skills. He believed that it was not so much as a set of traits, but as a pattern of motives (very interesting thought). He claimed that successful leaders will tend to have a high need for power, a low need for affiliation, and a high level of what he called activity inhibition (one might call it self-control). The rest they need to learn

 

I'm looking forward to read some inspiring thoughts about this subject

 

Regards – Mark von Rosing

Leadership Excellence - That Gets Results

Managers often fail to appreciate how profoundly the organizational climate can influence financial results. It can account for nearly a third of financial performance. Organizational climate, in turn, is influenced by leadership style—by the way that managers motivate direct reports, gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives, and handle crises. There are six basic leadership styles. Each derives from different emotional intelligence competencies, works best in particular situations, and affects the organizational climate in different ways.

 

1. The coercive style. This “Do what I say” approach can be very effective in a turnaround situation, a natural disaster, or when working with problem employees. But in most situations, coercive leadership inhibits

the organization’s flexibility and dampens employees’ motivation.

 

2. The authoritative style. An authoritative leader takes a “Come with me” approach: she states the overall goal but gives people the freedom to choose their own means of achieving it. This style works especially

well when a business is adrift. It is less effective when the leader is working with a team of experts who are more experienced than he is.

 

3. The affiliative style. The hallmark of the affiliative leader is a “People come first” attitude. This style is particularly useful for building team harmony or increasing morale. But its exclusive focus on praise can

allow poor performance to go uncorrected. Also, affiliative leaders rarely offer advice, which often leaves employees in a quandary.

 

4. The democratic style. This style’s impact on organizational climate is not as high as you might imagine. By giving workers a voice in decisions, democratic leaders build organizational flexibility and responsibility and help generate fresh ideas. But sometimes the price is endless meetings and confused employees who feel leaderless.

 

5. The pacesetting style. A leader who sets high performance standards and exemplifies them himself has a very positive impact on employees who are self-motivated and highly competent. But other employees tend to feel overwhelmed by such a leader’s demands for excellence—and to resent his tendency to take over a situation.

 

6. The coaching style. This style focuses more on personal development than on immediate work-related tasks. It works well when employees are already aware of their weaknesses and want to improve, but not when they are resistant to changing their ways.

 

The more styles a leader has mastered, the better.

 

In particular, being able to switch among the authoritative, affiliative, democratic, and coaching styles as conditions dictate creates the best organizational climate and optimizes business performance.

 

It has been more than a decade since research first linked aspects of emotional intelligence to business results. The late David McClelland, a noted Harvard University psychologist, found that leaders with strengths in a critical mass of six or more emotional intelligence competencies were far more effective than peers who lacked such strengths. For instance, when he analyzed the performance of di-vision heads at a global food and beverage company, he found that among leaders with this critical mass of competence, 87% placed in the top third for annual salary bonuses based on their business performance. More telling, their divisions on average outperformed yearly revenue targets by 15% to 20%.

 

More important is that the findings revealed that those executives who lacked emotional intelligence were rarely rated as outstanding in their annual performance reviews, and their divisions underperformed by an average of almost 20%.

 

Further research was made to gain a more molecular view of the links among leadership and emotional intelligence, and climate and performance. A team of McClelland’s colleagues headed by Mary Fontaine and Ruth Jacobs from Hay/McBer studied data about or observed thousands of executives, noting specific behaviors and their impact on climate.

 

How did each individual motivate direct reports?

Manage change initiatives?

Handle crises?

 

It was in a later phase of the research that they identified which emotional intelligence capabilities drive the six leadership styles (mentioned on the top).

How does he rate in terms of self-control and social skill?

Does a leader show high or low levels of empathy?

 

The team tested each executive’s immediate sphere of influence for its climate. “Climate” is not an amorphous term. First defined by psychologists George Litwin and Richard Stringer and later refined by McClelland and his colleagues, it refers to six key factors that influence an organization’s working environment: its flexibility – that is, how free employees feel to innovate unencumbered by red tape; their sense of responsibility to the organization; the level of standards that people set; the sense of accuracy about performance feedback and aptness of rewards; the clarity people have about mission and values; and finally, the level of commitment to a common purpose.

 

The research revealed that all six leadership styles have a measurable effect on each aspect of climate. Further, when they researched the impact of climate on financial results

-          such as return on sales,

-          revenue growth,

-          efficiency,

-          profitability

 

It was found a direct correlation between the two. Leaders who used styles that positively affected the climate had decidedly better financial results than those who did not. That is not to say that organizational climate is the only driver of performance. But it was proven to have a direct relation!

 

Conclusion:

Economic conditions and competitive dynamics matter enormously. But the analysis strongly suggests that climate accounts for nearly a third of results. And that’s simply too much of an impact to ignore. Therefore many managers mistakenly assume that leadership style is a function of personality rather than strategic choice. Instead of choosing the one style that suits their temperament, they should ask which style best addresses the demands of a particular situation. Don’t be a product of your basic emotions and behaviors, you have a choice.

 

Research shows that the most successful leaders have strengths in the following emotional intelligence competencies: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill. There are six basic styles of leadership; each makes use of the key components of emotional intelligence in different combinations. The best leaders don’t know just one style of leadership—they’re skilled at several, and have the flexibility to switch between styles as the circumstances dictate.

 

Having worked many years as a leadership coach, I do realize that few leaders, of course, have different styles in their repertory, and even fewer know when and how to use them. In fact, when I discuss this subject with many leaders and organizations, the most common responses have been, “But I have mainly one or two of those!” and, “I can’t use all those styles. It wouldn’t be natural.” Such feelings are understandable, and in some cases, the antidote is relatively simple. The leader can build a team with members who employ styles he/she lacks. Take the case of a VP for manufacturing. She successfully ran a global factory system largely by using the affiliative style. She was on the road constantly, meeting with plant managers, attending to their pressing concerns, and letting them know how much she cared about them personally. She left the division’s strategy – extreme efficiency – to a trusted lieutenant with a keen understanding of technology, and she delegated its performance standards to a colleague who was adept at the authoritative approach. She also had a pacesetter on her team who always visited the plants with her. An alternative approach, and one I would recommend more, is for leaders to expand their own style repertories.

 

To do so, leaders must first understand which emotional intelligence competencies underlie the leadership styles they are lacking. They can then work assiduously to increase their quotient of them. For instance, an affiliative leader has strengths in three emotional intelligence competencies: in empathy, in building relationships, and in communication. Empathy –sensing how people are feeling in the moment – allows the affiliative leader to respond to employees in a way that is highly congruent with that person’s emotions, thus building rapport. The affiliative leader also displays a natural ease in forming new relationships, getting to know someone as a person, and cultivating a bond.

 

Finally, the outstanding affiliative leader has mastered the art of interpersonal communication, particularly in saying just the right thing or making the apt symbolic gesture at just the right moment. So if you are primarily a pacesetting leader who wants to be able to use the affiliative style more often, you would need to improve your level of empathy and, perhaps, your skills at building relationships or communicating effectively. As another example, an authoritative leader who wants to add the democratic style to his repertory might need to work on the capabilities of collaboration and communication. 

 

I strongly believe that Leadership excellence is made, not born. Such advice about adding capabilities may seem simplistic – ”Go change yourself” – but enhancing emotional intelligence is entirely possible with practice. That's why I’m dedicated to helping you grow and master practice this difficult task.

 

Regards - Mark

What are hidden drivers of great performance

A growing body of research on the human brain proves that, for better or worse, leaders’ moods affect the emotions of the people around them. The reason for that lies in what scientists call the open-loop nature of the brain’s limbic system, our emotional center. A closed-loop system is self-regulating, whereas an open-loop system depends on external sources to manage itself. In other words, we rely on connections with other people to determine our moods. The open-loop limbic system was a winning design in evolution because it let people come to one another’s emotional rescue – enabling a mother, for example, to soothe her crying infant. The open-loop design serves the same purpose today as it did thousands of years ago. Research in intensive care units has shown, for example, that the comforting presence of another person not only lowers the patient’s blood pressure but also slows the secretion of fatty acids that block arteries. Another study found that three or more incidents of intense stress within a year (for example, serious financial trouble, being fired, or a divorce) triples the death rate in socially isolated middle-aged men, but it has no impact on the death rate of men with many close relationships.

 

Scientists describe the open loop as “interpersonal limbic regulation”; one person transmits signals that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular functions, sleep rhythms, even immune functions, inside the body of another.That’s how couples are able to trigger surges of oxytocin in each other’s brains, creating a pleasant, affectionate feeling. But in all aspects of social life, our physiologies intermingle. Our limbic system’s open-loop design lets other people change our very physiology and hence, our emotions.

 

Even though the open loop is so much a part of our lives, we usually don’t notice the process. Scientists have captured the attunement of emotions in the laboratory by measuring the physiology – such as heart rate – of two people sharing a good conversation. As the interaction begins, their bodies operate at different rhythms. But after 15 minutes, the physiological profiles of their bodies look remarkably similar. Researchers have seen again and again how emotions spread irresistibly in this way whenever people are near one another. As far back as 1981, psychologists Howard Friedman and Ronald Riggio found that even completely nonverbal expressiveness can affect other people. For example, when three strangers sit facing one another in silence for a minute or two, the most emotionally expressive of the three transmits his or her mood to the other two– without a single word being spoken.

 

The same holds true in the office, boardroom, or shop floor; group members inevitably “catch” feelings from one another. In 2000, Caroline Bartel at New York University and Richard Saavedra at the University of Michigan found that in 70 work teams across diverse industries, people in meetings together ended up sharing moods – both good and bad – within two hours. One study asked teams of nurses and accountants to monitor their moods over weeks; researchers discovered that their emotions tracked together, and they were largely independent of each team’s shared hassles. Groups, therefore, like individuals, ride emotional roller coasters, sharing everything from jealousy to angst to euphoria. (A good mood, incidentally, spreads most swiftly by the judicious use of humor. For more on this, see the sidebar “Smile and the World Smiles with You.”) Moods that start at the top tend to move the fastest because everyone watches the boss. They take their emotional cues from him. Even when the boss isn’t highly visible – for example, the CEO who works behind closed doors on an upper floor – his attitude affects the moods of his direct reports, and a domino effect ripples throughout the company.

 

When I say that managing your mood and the moods of your followers is the task of primal leadership, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that mood is all that matters. As I’ve noted, your actions are critical, and mood and actions together must resonate with the organization and with reality. Similarly, we acknowledge all the other challenges leaders must conquer–from strategy to hiring to new product development. It’s all in a long day’s work.

 

But taken as a whole, the message sent by neurological, psychological, and organizational research is startling in its clarity. We’ve known for years that emotional intelligence improves results – often by an order of magnitude. Now, new research shows that a leader’s mood plays a key role in that dynamic – a discovery that should redefine what leaders do first and best. So remember emotional leadership is the spark that ignites a company’s performance, creating a bonfire of success or a landscape of ashes.

 

I strongly believe that Leadership excellence is made, not born. Such advice about adding mood capabilities may seem simplistic. Moods matter that much and especially yours as a leader, therefore “Go change yourself”, add the discussed capabilities. Having worked many years as a leadership coach, I do realize that the most common response to this would be “But I have a certain style, I can’t use this style, it wouldn’t be natural. This wouldn’t fit my personality” Such feelings are understandable, but the conclusion is wrong, for this has nothing to do with the personality. A leaders should expand their own style repertories. That's why I’m dedicated to helping you grow and master practice this difficult task.

 

Regards – Mark von Rosing

Great findings on Leadership!!!!!!!!

The things that puzzle me on nearly each leadership coaching I have, is that there are so few people that can say or communicate what leadership really is and what are the actual skills that make up a leader?, what are the talents (natural characteristics) …………..there are so many that answer that you are ether a leader or not, which is basically not true. But the question remains what is a leader and or what makes a leader?

 

Very interesting findings have been revealed by comparison, bonobos, the second-closest species-relatives of man. The study from Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson (Professors in Biological Anthropology at Harvard University) revealed that bonobos do not unite behind the strongest chief male. The bonobos show deference to an alpha or top-ranking female that, with the support of her coalition and relationship of other females, can prove as strong or even stronger as the strongest male in the land. Thus, if leadership amounts to getting the greatest number of followers, then among the bonobos, a female almost always exerts the strongest and most effective leadership.

 

Some have argued that, since the bonobo pattern inverts the dominant pattern among chimpanzees and men with regard to whether a female can get more followers than a male, humans and chimpanzees both likely inherited gender-bias against women from the ancestors of the chimpanzees; gender-bias features as a genetic condition of men. And the bias against women having leadership as a position of authority occurs in most cultures in the world. As of 2002, Sweden had the highest percentage of women in the legislature and Denmark the highest in Leadership positions, which is 43%. The United States, Andorra, Israel, Sierra Leone, and Ireland tied for 57th place with less than 15% of the legislature women. Admittedly, those percentages significantly outclass the occurrence of female chimpanzees becoming alpha of the community by getting the most followers, but similar trends exist in manifesting a general gender-bias across cultures against females gaining leadership as a position of authority over followers.

 

An alternative explanation suggests that those individuals best suited to lead the group will somehow rise to the occasion and that followers (for some reason) will accept them as leaders or as proto-leaders. In this scenario, the traits of the leaders (such as gender, aggressiveness, etc.) will depend on the requirements of a given situation, and ongoing leadership may become extrapolated from a series of such situations.

 

In cultural anthropology, much speculation on the origins of human leadership relates to the perceived increasing need for dispute resolution in increasingly densely-populated and increasingly complex societies.

 

The image of swarms of lemmings which follow the first lemming off a cliff appears frequently in characterizing followers. The animal kingdom also provides the actual model of the bellwether function in a mob of sheep. And human society also offers many examples of emulation. The fashion industry, for example, depends on it. Fashion marketers design clothing for celebrities, then offer less expensive variations/imitations for those who emulate the celebrities.

 

Unintentional leadership can also occur from more pro-active forms followership. For example, in organizations which punish both leadership inaction and mistakes, and in which a predicament has no good solution, a common tendency involves declaring oneself a follower of someone else — metaphorically passing the buck.

 

Another example of followership without intentional leadership comes with the market leadership of a pioneering company, or the price leadership of a monopolist. Other companies will emulate a successful strategy, product, or price, but originators may certainly not desire this — in fact they often do all they can legally do to prevent such direct competition.

 

The term "leadership" sometimes applies (confusingly) to a winning position in a race. One can speak of a front-runner in a sprint or of the "leader" in an election or poll as in a position of leadership. But such "leadership" does not involve any influence processes, and the "leader" will have followers who may not willingly choose to function as followers. Once again: one can make an important distinction between "being competitive and being in the lead" and the process of leadership. Once again, leadership implies a relationship of power - the power both to be competitive and to guide others.

 

What a great finding.......it is about social competence, that we know a lot of leaders lack............I'm really looking forward to read your thoughts on this.

 

Regards your moderator - Mark