RAJEEV PESHAWARIA
FREE PRESS; 222 PAGES
PART 1: SELF AND TEAM LEADERSHIP
1.1 ENERGIZE
The Self: Self-Leadership
Lead
yourself to lead others
One of the biggest reasons for abundance
of poor or mediocre leaders is that people accept leadership positions for the
wrong reasons. Leadership needs a
purpose bigger than self-interest.
People, who go into leadership position without fully understanding
this, will make terrible bosses.
Leadership is like
parenting. The rewards need to be in the journey. Leadership is about creating a future that is
better than the present. Without
clarity of personal purpose, it is virtually impossible to imagine a better
future. Your purpose and values define
your leadership identity and give you the energy you need to stay the
course. Leadership is about the long
haul, and you need lasting sources of energy.
There is no shortcut formula to becoming a
better leader. The only way to define
your purpose and values is to ask yourself some tough questions about purpose
and values that will help you put things in perspective. To determine the purpose, we need to make a
brutal honest assessment of what we really want. Clarity on what is important to you has a
direct bearing on one of the most common challenges of living the corporate
existence.
The important thing to get clear is: do
you want to be a leader at all or not.
Leading others is not better or worse than self-leadership. It is a preference and requires a different
orientation. To
lead others, you must be a team player.
Most organization try to teach the value of teamwork, but like
leadership, teamwork cannot be taught. Visualizing a better future is the basic prerequisite of
leadership.
You become a
leader when
You move from
problem solving to
Purpose finding
-Robert
Quinn, author of Deep Change-
In business, it is easy to find many
managers and bosses who are excellent problem solvers and great at
follow-through. Only a few challenge
that status quo and visualize a new and different future. Even fewer invite their team to participate
in brain-storming sessions about how to challenge conventional wisdom and
create something different. Good leaders have a natural tendency to question the
status quo.
Purpose defines what you want to create,
and values define how you will create it.
Values determine your emotions, and the energy created by emotions in
turn produces great performance. Emotional energy can be positive or negative. Positive emotional energy produces memorable
great performances, whereas negative emotional energy produces regrettable
performance and behaviour. Great leaders understand that prerequisite to managing
emotions is having clarity about values.
Emotions happen when there is a match or
mismatch between your deeply held values and the situation at hand. Learn how to recognize your emotions as you
experience them, and to understand what is triggering them. Studies have shown that emotional energy is 4
times more powerful than rational energy.
Great leaders understand the power of
emotion, and are able to harness it to motivate people to action. They do so by appealing to values.
One of the most powerful developmental
experiences is called ‘Personal Best’.
When emotions produced negative impulses, it will prevent us from being
at our personal best. So, think about how you want others to experience you. The more you think about how you want to
portray yourself, the cleared you get about your values.
Great leaders have clarity
about their values and they also have the courage to act according to them. The very
essence of leadership is the ability to stay the course despite stiff
opposition, because leaders succeed in spite of, not because of, their
environment. Behaving in accordance with
stated values is the key. Real leaders
differentiate themselves by their actions, not their words.
There is a very thin line between
sticking to your purpose and values, and being stubborn. While leaders must be prepared to act
accordingly to their values, and be ready to be in the game for the long haul,
they must also keep an open mind and be prepared to change their views as they
receive new information.
There is a strong link between emotions
and performance. High performance is a
function of emotional energy. To
understand and recognize your emotions, you need to know your values. Once you have clarified your values, you need
to better understand situations that cause you to feel emotions. In order to create a better future, leaders
need energy in abundance. Clarity about
purpose and values are the only lasting source of leadership energy.
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to be continued.....
