Leadership... who cares? 

You should!

The leader is the essential element to a business's success or failure. And it is critical for a leader to create a vision and communicate the steps clearly so that team members know exactly how they will accomplish it.
Warren Bennis, author of Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, warns: “A business low on capital can borrow money. And one with a poor location can move. But a business short on leadership has little chance of survival.”
Leaders of today's businesses must cope with a unique set of challenges. Technological, social, and economic forces compel leaders to address these issues in order to stay ahead of the competition. Some of these challenges include:
• Globalisation of business leading to cultural competency requirements
• Growth of strategic alliances
• Acceleration of information and access to it
• Daily innovations in technology
• Changing demographics and workforce
• Flattening of organisation, increased workloads and expanding skill requirements

The abundance of these external and internal forces in the business environment can destroy a company that does not have effective leadership with an eye towards the future.

Noel M. Tichy, author of The Leadership Engine, finds: "In the future, the real core competence of companies will be the ability to continuously and creatively destroy and remake themselves to meet customer demands. Everyone in the organisation must take responsibility for taking responsive actions. This means that a company needs leadership everywhere in the organisation. From the corner office, in the customer rep's cubicle, and on the shop floor. Leadership is the ability to see reality as it really is and to mobilise the appropriate response."


So What IS Leadership Anyway?

Leadership is the art of motivating people to act and includes the following key aspects:
• Managing with high energy and boundless enthusiasm
• Giving people a sense of purpose and direction
• Planning for success—nothing succeeds in motivating people
more than being successful and nobody wants to be associated with failure
• Dishing out plenty of praise and encouragement 
• Creating opportunities for people to get attention
• Demonstrating confidence and faith in people’s abilities
• Encouraging achievable tasks
• Giving people a sense of history and hope
• Developing a collective vision for the future

What Leadership Is Not
Warren Bennis in his book Why Leaders Can't Lead says that leadership is not:
• A position: Almost anyone can be elected, selected, anointed, self-appointed, promoted, or succeeded.
• Building a personality cult: Giving too much power to one individual is detrimental to the leader, to the followers, and to the cause. Build collective leadership, not personality cults.
• Being indispensable: Effective leadership is being dispensable. The mark of a true leader is demonstrated by the fact that the show must and can go on without him or her.
• Blaming others: Leadership is first and foremost being responsible for the decisions you make or fail to make.

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• Made Simple Group