Your Organizational Prowess - Part Two

Here we are again. Part two of the mini-seminar to sharpen our skills and understanding to help us grow in our relationships with our company, customers, subordinates, and our suppliers. Without further ado....

Leadership/Management

Management can sometimes be synonymous with leadership. Whether we speak solely of leadership or in conjunction with management, they essentially have these foundation parts: Common Sense, Applied Skills and Mechanical Skills.

Common Sense: Natural Instinct

• Showing others what to do
• Seeing it being done before - watch

Applied Skills: Physical or Action

• Leading others by example
• Process coordination
• Recording numbers; people, product, money

Mechanical Skills: Mental Processing or Formulation

• Seeing it in your mind
• Logical coordination by importance
• Charting numbers; people, product, money

Since we live in a society in which we have freedom of choice, the primary limiters of our happiness and success are our unrealistic fears. This is especially important for leaders to understand because their decisions affect so many other people.

Their weaknesses become weaknesses of the organization that they're leading. The following are four habits resulting from unrealistic fears that lead to poor leadership and unnecessary limitations on organizational performance.

1. Lacking Integrity

Being trusted by your followers is essential for leadership success. People trust you when you do what you say you're going to do. Trust is the cornerstone of teamwork. and teamwork is the cornerstone of organizational performance. If you don't tell the truth, including making exaggerated promises that you can't keep, then you lack integrity. The unrealistic fear here is that the truth isn't "good enough" to avoid rejection from others.

2. Bullying

People who engage in bullying were bullied themselves. Someone taught them that human interactions are always a win-lose affair, and they're absolutely terrified of being on the losing end of relationships.

Since the #1 predictor of leadership success is your followers feeling cared about, this won't play to your advantage. You'll see hyper-criticizing of others as "not good enough" and, believe it or not, name calling (perhaps you thought that grownups stopped doing this after grade school: not so).

The unrealistic fear hers is the leader not feeling confident enough about themselves to engage in more egalitarian win-win relating: they need to lord their position power over others to cover their fear.

3. Being Impetuous

We all have emotional impulses all day long. Wise and mature people think about these impulses before acting on them. Maturity and wisdom result from a good integration of your thinking and your feelings over time (what will happen after I do this? How will it affect the people I care about?).

Without this integration you get a "ready,fire, aim" approach to decision making that can lead to destructive leadership decisions.

The unrealistic fear here is that if your feelings aren't expressed immediately you'll somehow lose the opportunity to have your needs met at all.

4. Ignoring the Facts

To be successful an organization must be "data driven." We all have strongly-held biases and opinions, and this makes us subject to the "tyranny of our own limited experience" when we make decisions. When facts are available we need to use them to our advantage. As leaders, we ignore them at our peril (and that of others).

The unrealistic fear here is that going against your strong emotions is always dangerous-sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't depending upon the facts.

High-Performance Habits

1. Identify your unrealistic fears- this is best accomplished with help from a skilled guide.
2. Overcome your unrealistic fears- this also is best accomplished with help from a skilled guide.
3. For the greatest happiness and leadership success, use both rational intelligence (e.g. knowing the facts) and emotional intelligence (e.g. knowing your unrealistic fears) when making decisions.

Good Leadership is Rational.

This term implies being:

• Integrative; linking one issue with another. External Issue Relationship
• Comprehensive; in-depth and definitive, a broader approach. Internal Issue Relationship
• Systematic; standard procedures and accountability. Capacities for knowing what to do
• Projective; future outlook on outcomes. Confidence in Analyzing Effects

Good Leadership is also Subjective or Emotional.

This implies:

• Sequential; one issue at a time. External Issue Relationship
• Segmental; a set of issues, being troubled less by the failure to be comprehensive. Internal Issue Relationship
• Unsystematic; lack of consideration or concern to procedures or accountability. Capacities for knowing what to do
• Reactive; rating immediate consequences, not so much on future effects. Confident in Analyzing Effects

Looking back, you can link each section with the other. To lead others you have to know your Self. If you want to market effectively, you have to have multiple channels to do so. When it comes to networking, just remember to broaden your interests and do not neglect people that are assets for your growth.

Although the first submission, which was part one, was jumbled around by an editor (because networking was first), we can still clearly identify that each part is dependent upon the other. You know yourself, so then you can market better. When you know yourself, then you can network with others and assimilate that marketing to your life and your career, or business.