Hi! Welcome back. As I wrote last time I’ve been writing about leadership for over a month now looking into what others consider the major aspects and traits of a good leader are. Today I’d like to continue writing from John C. Maxwell’s book The 5 Levels of Leadership. Maxwell not only wrote about the qualities of leadership but also outlined his program on how to develop leaders. Since one of my reasons for doing this blog is to impart knowledge about how to improve people and the organizations that they work in I feel this post should be very beneficial to many of you. Below is what Mr. Maxwell does to create a culture that supports leadership, some of the questions he asks when others ask him about developing a leadership program and his explanation in his own words about developing leaders within an organization. I hope you find this information useful to you in establishing your leadership programs.
Maxwell writes to develop leaders you must create a culture that promotes leadership. Below are some questions you can ask yourself if you want to create leaders in your business:
1. What percentage of the payroll goes into leadership development?
2. What kinds of formal training do we do?
3. To what extent do we reward leadership?
4. Do we have a cadre of good mentors?
Maxwell further states that if you want to develop a culture that creates level 5 leaders, then do the following:
1. Champion Leadership, define and model good leadership within your organization.
2. Teach Leadership, train leaders on a regular, frequent and consistent basis.
3. Practice Leadership, help emerging leaders to plan and execute, fail and succeed.
4. Coach Leadership, review emerging leaders’ performance and correct their errors.
5. Reward Leadership, reward good leadership with pay, resources and recognition.
Maxwell provides guidelines for Leadership Development:
1. The process must occur daily. The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda. No one ever got good at anything they seldom practiced.
2. The process must be measurable. Although growth begins inwardly, it must be proven outwardly. Therefore, the goals of growth must be something that can be seen and verified by you and the person you mentor. If they don’t know where they’re going, how will they know if they get there?
3. The process must include things they value. If you include things the protégé desires they will be more motivated to achieve them.
4. The process must align with your strengths. You can only coach people in areas that you know and do well—in areas that are your strengths. As you prepare to develop people, teach from those strengths and encourage those you mentor to seek out others who can help them in areas where you can’t.
Mr. Maxwell explains in his own words how to develop leaders within an organization. ” I began to look for opportunities to put leaders in situations where they could learn experience-based lessons. For example, whenever there was a problem in the organization, I didn’t solve it myself. Instead, I sent one of the leaders I was developing to try to figure it out. Afterwards, we’d discuss how he or she solved the problem and what he or she learned. To help their communication, when leaders were ready, I’d give them an opportunity to speak: to various groups, to the leaders, or the entire organization. Afterwards, we’d talk about what went wrong and what went right, and what they could do the next time to improve. If I wanted to help them develop their influence and improve their teamwork, I’d ask them to recruit a team of volunteers for an event or a program and work with that team to follow through. You get the idea. When you lead an organization, you can’t be focused on just fulfilling the vision or getting work done. Every challenge, problem, opportunity, or initiative is a chance for you to pair potential leaders to leadership development experience that will change who they are.”
That’s pretty good practical advice don’t you think? Many of us don’t have the status to develop and instill leadership within us or others or so we believe. However Maxwell states a key point when he mentioned that “You can only coach people in areas that you know and do well—in areas that are your strengths.” What areas are you strong at? How could you impart that knowledge or skill to others around you? Looking to improve your leadership skills? Review the past posts on the subject at this blog and sent me a comment if you care to, until next time all my best! Jer.
No comments:
Post a Comment