“Finding quality time to spend with staff is vitally important, particularly if they are inexperienced and need training to be able to carry out their role. “
Experience over the years working with leaders in the mining, manufacturing, banking and hospitality industries has produced the following insights on Legitimate Leadership’s Leadership Diagnostics methodology.
The problem with leadership work (care and growth) is that it is vitally important but rarely urgent. Because of this it can be put off for another day – and typically that is what happens.
For more information regarding the above, please
E-mail info@legitimateleadership.com
Question of the Month
By Wendy Lambourne, director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: Are there people who prefer to be managed rather than led?
Answer: The universal answer to the question “who would you work for willingly?” is “a giver, not a taker” – that is, “someone who is in the relationship to care for and grow me”. So in the sense that caring and growing people is leadership, not management, generally people want to be led not managed.
But there are two caveats to that statement. Firstly, while all people want the person they respect to have a genuine concern for their wellbeing, to care for them as a human being not as a human resource, not everyone wants “tough love”. They may want the “nice” part of care but not the kind of care which enables them to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for the situations that they are in. They prefer to remain “looked after”, dependent and needy rather than being supported to become strong and self-reliant.
Secondly, there are people who don’t want to be empowered. Read full answer by clicking here.
VIGNETTE CASE STUDY: DIFFERENT SCENARIOS FOR LEARNING ON THE JOB
In a written feedback about Legitimate Leadership’s Module 1 (Building Strong People), and in particular about a prescribed article for that module, Your Diary Never Lies, a manager who had started his career as an apprentice said that at a personal level, his own career had benefitted from working with managers who took time to help him over the years and “just watching how they performed in the work place was a learning experience itself”.
“Finding quality time to spend with staff is vitally important, particularly if they are inexperienced and need training to be able to carry out their role. Delegation of tasks becomes much easier with an experienced team. This is something I learned 10 years ago when working as a programme manager. The job was easy when I had inherited a team of experienced schedulers, who knew exactly what they were doing and delivered everything that was asked of them. None of them were victims, they were a pleasure to work with and easy to manage.
“This period gave me a false sense of security, thinking that management was easy.
ARTICLE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM DOING LEADERSHIP DIAGNOSTICS
By Wendy Lambourne, director, Legitimate Leadership.
Experience over the years working with leaders in the mining, manufacturing, banking and hospitality industries has produced the following insights on Legitimate Leadership’s Leadership Diagnostics methodology: do it with benevolent intent; do on both positive and negative exceptions; use with a specific purpose in mind; apply the tool to a specific incident or result; diagnose by ‘watching the game’; ask ‘why?’ all the way up the line; remedial action needs to be owned and driven by the line; be wary of excuses – invalid means and ability claims; the improvement timeframe will be shorter when means and accountability, rather than ability, are at issue; and do both reactive and proactive diagnostics.
VIDEO: THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTIC OF A LEADER
By Simon Sinek, American author on leadership, and motivational speaker.
COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, DIRECTOR, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The problem with leadership work (care and growth) is that it is vitally important but rarely urgent. Because of this it can be put off for another day – and typically that is what happens. Leaders are not here to produce outcomes, they are here to produce the people to produce outcomes. This will only happen when they are courageous enough to focus their time and attention on the care and growth of their people, when they schedule time for the leadership work and stick to the plan. What gives leaders the courage to do this is simply the conviction that people matter and that, as those in charge of others, their job is to “give” to them not to “get” results out of them.
OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: I (Simon Sinek) am often asked what the most important characteristics of leadership are – vision, charisma, etc. I know plenty of incredible leaders that aren’t Steve Jobs visionaries. And I know some fantastic leaders who do not have charisma – they’re quiet and super-introverted, not that exciting to talk to or spend time with.
When I say charisma I mean the traditional definition which is more about energy. But I believe that charisma is undying belief in something – and they have that in spades.
But I think courage is the one thing that all great leaders have to have because we are surrounded by overwhelming forces every day pushing us to play the finite game. The pressures are overwhelming.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE
ARTICLE: LESSONS LEARNED FROM DOING LEADERSHIP DIAGNOSTICS
VIDEO: THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTIC OF A LEADER