Piece written by Eleas Stanley
LEADERSHIP – AN INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a broad process that covers vast facets of life, htis vastness almost makes the word leadership vague and confusing in addition to narrow definations of what excatly is leadership is.
To streamline things and bring more efficiency to the process of leadership,i have divided leadership into three broad. These kinds are circumstantial, that is, the use of a particuler method is based on the challenge to be solved. Though experience and indirect observation has revealed that most leaders have great strength when using one of the method than the others.
The methods
1- Strategic or scientific leader
2- Energy and result leader,
3- heartfelt team guide.
The major diffrence between these is their center of focus and their method of doing things.
1- Strategic leaders
These leaders are primarily concerned with the A-overall working system,
B- The rules,ethics,guidelines of an organisation (this organisation can be any from a family setting to a large company or a community ).
C- The do’s and don’t of the organisation.
In general,these leaders are system based,their primary leadership is to overhaul the system,find out wht it has not achieved set goals or why it is under producing or where problem is coming from.
These leaders function best when acting as managment or admin personel since they are deep thinkers and have a knack for details. They will take their time to read every graph,document,listen to those necessary to listen to then get down to the root of things and create innovation that will take the system to the next level. The greatest investors come from this kind of people as every development or invention in any field is a step further on the path of that facet of life. A step that is precipitated by the challenges and need of that sytem.
Strength
1-Long term planning
2-Deep thinkers
3-Can see all facets of every organisation
4- Believes that work should be guided by principles rather than personal attitude.
5- Is more commited to organisational objective than personal objective.
Weakness
1-Lacks drive to achieve instant result
2- for some of this type holds their personal prinicples above organisational principles and this makes it difficult for them to obey rules,in addition to their odd(can be unique also) ways of doing things.
3- Sometimes is a bad team player especially to those he view as people as low classed or low moral standard.
4- You will need an huge amount information,data,fact, analysis and any other tangible material to prove to him that he is wrong. Even when doing this dont sound it as “i know better than you” else you drag him into an intellectual argument which using facts and analysis you cannot win.
5- He is slow to warm up to those considered strangers,this effects productivity as he may be unwilling to coeperate with them. Or he could be outright bad team player,he works best when alone.
6- will do everything in his power not to work with those he does not like
7- Are morally unbendable,even when organisational goal conflict with personal moral,they do what their personal morals say.
2- Energy and result leader, these leaders do not have time for analysis,they go straigtht to point and get the work done. They are the engine room of any organisation,they are the motivators that keep all hands on deck to get the job done. They will work or overwork everybody with their firebrand attitude until result is got leaving behind them a chain of hurt or disastisfied people.
Their primary motto is work…work and work again. This leaders need the deep analysis of strategic leading else they will create more problem than they can solve. In some cases,these leader move headon into a project without calculating to know what should be done and what should be not done,this makes them create serious challenges that they will be forced to hire/invite the service of strategic leaders to come find out how they can get out of the problem.
Though they achieve results sometimes the cost is high for the organisation.
Strength
1-Can inject morale into the organisation.
2- Will protect those in his goodbook.
3- Will add fun to the project
4 – Will not rest until he sees result.
Weakness
1- Lacks empaty and impatient with slow staff.
2- Can be very cruel and insentitive
3- Can be abusive brash
4- Will get down to work without much ado
5- If he thinks he is right,not all the diplomats or negotiators on the planet can convince him otherwise. But when he learns to tame this self rightousness he will achieve more.
6- Likes power,authority, command and is very dictatorial,opinionate and forceful. He works better in a strictly hierachical structure where everybody knows his limit.
7- He is very political and power hungry.
8- Is prone to dividing the house, this is done through infighting especially if it suits his power block agender or he will do this by creating a group of followers loyal to him. The challenge here is that he may not be loyal to the higher leadership in which case once he creates a power block(group of followers) he will either unseat the leadership or make it loyal to him.
9- Is more commited to personal goals than organisational goals. This creates competition that blinds him from fulfiling overall organisational objective. This type is knowm to even sabotage the effort of others in his organisation just to prove his point or show that they cannot achieve like him.
10- Can be morally upright but bendable when they seek want something deeply,at such time,the end justifies the means.
11- Too competitive
3- Heartfelt leader,this leader is people oriented,his major aim is to understand the people in the system and help create solution to their problem at the personal level. He is people oriented, he has the same drive with the strategic leader, the diffrence being that,he is people oriented while the strategic leader is syem oriented.
At the career level,those using this leadership method are into helping profesions such as counseling and consulting.
The strategic leader could also be into consulting but thats at the coperate level while the heartfelt leader will prefer to consult at the personal level or other areas such as coaching,mentoring,counselling.
To the workforce and result leader,consulting takes too much time for listening and reading,two commodities not in his radar.
Strenth
1- Can note even minor details often not seen by other
Weakness
1- Is slow to work with
2- Does not learn easily,very conservative.
Finding which method you predominantly use
Do the questionair and score yourself
1- if someone requires your attention to check why his organisation is having problem. What do you do when you get there
A- check all the rule book,consult with stakeholders and do some deep thinking of the system
B- Think up a new thing to do to get everybody involed then you lead and make sure everybody is doing their part
C-have a one on one discusion with almost everybody in the system.
2- Before begining the troubleshooting,what will be your first thinking about reason for the problem.
A – faulty organisation structure.
B – Lazy or over pampared people in the sytem or people lacking discipline.
C- Believe that the individual staff/persons challenge is causing underperformance.
3- You have just won a major project to do a task that will take long to finish. What is the first thing you do.
A- Call a board meeting and discuss with key project personel to get the best advice on how to sucessfullyy impliment the prohect.
B- Immediatly, get the project to kick of without wasting precious time to discuss plans or strategy.
C- Hold meeting with every part or team in the project.
4- If in an organisation mcuh effort is put to build more sucess yet no improvement is taking place. What will say is the likely reason.
A- Organisations principles and strategy is to blame.
B- lazy and unproductive staff are the reason behind it.
C- Staff morale could be low,so lets dig further.
Result.
If you got more A’s then you are strategic,if a B then you are workforce result, if a C then you are a heartfelt leader.