The Leadership Challenge in Bangkok, Thailand
| Talent Technologies offers The Leadership Challenge Training Workshop in Bangkok, Thailand. The Leadership Challenge equips you with the skills to to thrive as a global leader. |
Leadership clarified
A lot has been written about Leadership but it’s perhaps unfortunate that, with all the reams and reams of text written about leadership, a lot remains unclear.
One of the problems is that so many different leadership theories abound. Here is a quick run through of the major schools of leadership thought:
1. Leaders are born, not made. ‘Great man’ and ‘trait’ theories are based on the concept that leaders rise when they are required, or that leaders possess certain personality characteristics that mark them out for leadership.
2. All leadership is down to the situation and environment. Another school of thought tells us that there is no one ‘way’ of leadership. Instead, leaders respond to the situation at hand – their resources and goals, the status of the environment, and adapting a style (eg authoritarian vs democratic) according to the needs of the followers.
3. Leaders are made, not born. As opposed to (1) above, behavioural theories tell us that leadership can be learnt, and improved through observation, reflection, and practice.
4. Transactional vs. Transformational. This school of leadership focusses on a scale of rewards and punishment on the one hand, and ‘intrinsic’ motivators on the other, which the leader uses to get the best performance from his or her followers.
All of the above schools of thought have elements to recommend themselves. However, there is another, perilously overlooked, vital factor to consider…
The followers’ perspective!
Following their massive study (which remains ongoing) spanning 30 years of research into followers’ opinions in over 40 different countries worldwide, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner (authors of The Leadership Challenge) discovered that followers want their leaders to do 5 things:
1. Model the Way. Followers want their leaders to have clear values, achieve shared values among the team (or organisation) and follow them every day.
2. Inspire a Shared Vision. Followers want their leaders to create an inspiring and exciting vision of the future by enlisting their efforts based on shared aspirations.
3. Challenge the Process. Followers want their leaders to be outward-looking, opportunity-focussed and willing to experiment and take risks to continually generate small wins and learn from experience.
4. Enable Others to Act. Followers want their leaders to foster collaboration by building trust, and to strengthen others by empowering them and developing competence.
5. Encourage the Heart. Followers want their leaders to recognise their contributions, and celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.
Kouzes and Posner also found that the above behaviours were learnable – leading to their development of the world’s #1 leadership training programme, The Leadership Challenge.
Choose the best…
If you believe the followers’ perspective matters, and that you like your learning to be based on sound research, then why not check out The Leadership Challenge, which has been going strong for over 30 years and is now recognised simply as ‘the world’s most trusted source of leadership’.
Feel free to contact us using the form here if you would like further details, and make sure to add your name to our mailing list here to receive this and other useful tips in the future…
***
Talent Technologies :: Taking your Talent to a Higher Level
[...] focus on our leaders, but what does it take to be a great follower? This post follows up from our introduction to leadership and hopefully gives an insight into what it takes to be a great follower. But first, what does a [...]
[...] More importantly though, the research has found out what followers expect of their leaders. Taking the followers perspective means that we can be confident that, if we apply the Practices in the Leadership Wheel, we will get the results that we desire. If you would like to find out more about the Five Practices in The Leadership Challenge, you can read a summary here. [...]