WHY WE HAVE TOO MANY BOSSES AND TOO FEW LEADERS

BY EMILY TAN

FINANCIAL DAILY, FRIDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2011

Career paths are littered with many bosses, but few leaders.  A truly great leader is someone who brings out the best in you, who you can respect for who he is, and who genuinely cares about your success and growth.

To be a leader, you must understand failure and you must feel deeply about current inadequacies and feel driven to do something about it.  The first step to becoming a leader is to close your eyes and clearly see a better future.  Leader aren’t lone wolves, they understand the need to enlist co-leader and to galvanise the entire enterprise to work towards their goals.

When you become a leader you have to become a net giver and not a net taker.  A leader’s primary role is to build the ‘brains’, ‘bones’ and ‘nerves’ of the organisation and not to seek to create result themselves.

BRAINS	BONES	NERVES
Vision	Quality of talents	Cultural Philosophy
Strategy	Supporting systems and processes	Compensation and rewards
Unique Capabilities	Roles and responsibilities	Quality of leadership
	Resources allocation	Learning and renewal
	Design and structure

A company’s greatness doesn’t truly lie in its technology.  Technology will be out dated.  Innovation can be copied.  Talent can be poached.  The single thing a leader can create that is hardest to replicate is its culture.

Leadership is what your team does when you’re not around.  Too many bosses say one thing and do another which undermines the corporation’s culture.  The difference between leaders and bosses in a nut shell is that leader set out to create a better future while bosses cling to the past and cope with the present.

Talk by Rajeev

Pashewaria CEO of the International Centre for Leadership in Finance (ICLIF)

Accept the outspoken and direct employees in order to progress

BE HONEST

Despite all the modern management courses, MBA’s leadership courses and sophisticated education, human being still don’t like hearing the direct and frank truth.  Analysis of common workplace culture show that:

-       Bosses never like to be questioned at work

-       Authorities trying to control what we can write in blogs

-       nothing negative is to be said in the media.

Bosses will always say they are open minded and willing to listen and also willing to accept employees who ask questions.  But from experience, the ones who preach this mantra are usually the opposite.  Some organisation even work down employee’s performance if they are too outspoken, even if their work performance is good.

Despite all those, having an outspoken and direct trait has its positive thing.  These people are being honest, straight to the point and telling what most people don’t want to hear.

It’s time to accept the outspoken and direct employees in order to progress.  Just as long as they are just being honest, and speaking their mind, we should let them be.  Better still let’s really listen, because more often than not, what they are saying can be valuable and productive.

Shared From

Frankly Speaking

By Ben Ibrahim

StarMetro, Friday

18 February 2011

MAXIMIZE EMPLOYEES POTENTIAL

Top talent are seen as being most capable and they are usually a priority group when it comes to employee engagement.  They typically grab the limelight in every organisation.  Recently a survey was done to examine the differences between top talent and the developing capabilities group.  It is important to engage and retain the capabilities group.

The capabilities group are less positive about their work environment.  They feel less able to speak up and less likely to have sufficient authority to do their jobs well.  The employees feels that their performance are not being evaluated fairly and that they are appropriately recognised.

Fairness is the top engagement driver among this group.  These employees are more engaged when they feel they are treated with respect, fairness and integrity.  Thus, managing both spectrums of employees, the top talent and the developing capabilities is a way to maximise the best performance and the potentials.  Addressing both group is important.

1.        Managing Top Talent

i.                     Articulate compelling vision and sets of values

ii.                    Seek out opinions

-       To improve company competitiveness

iii.                  Involve them in addressing issues

iv.                 Emphasise career progression and personal growth

2.       Managing developing capabilities

i.                     Involve and empower/

ii.                    Encourage and motivate

iii.                  Foster a sense of fairness and inclusion

iv.                 Recognise even small accomplishments

v.                   Seek out opinion

vi.                 Emphasise career progression and personal growth

Shared From

Engage Every Employee By Brent Ruge.

The Star, Wenesday

16 February 2011