What You Need to Know about Leadership E-Book

Jeff Grout

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 251

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

What You Need to Know About Leadership

Business Needs Leaders. Every day, good and bad leaders make and break organizations. If you want to get anywhere in your career, showing leadership is crucial.

So what do you really need to know about leadership?

Find out:

• What it's all about
• Why vision matters
• How you can build a great team
• Why leaders need to motivate and inspire the people around them
• How to lead when the going gets tough

What You Need to Know about Leadership is the book you need to get to the corner office.

Read More in the What You Need to Know Series and Get up to Speed on the Essentials... Fast.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

What You Need to Know

Title page

Copyright page

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

A SHORT HISTORY OF LEADERSHIP

SOME ARE BORN ‘GREAT’

LEADERS’ BEHAVIOUR

ADAPTABLE LEADERS

WHERE WE ARE TODAY

ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP CHARACTERISTICS

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE

THE CHARISMA QUESTION

WHAT DO LEADERS ACTUALLY DO?

CHAPTER 2 CREATING A VISION

IDENTIFYING A HIGHER PURPOSE

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN A VISION AND A MISSION STATEMENT

FAMOUS VISIONS

VISIONS THAT ADAPT TO CHANGE

THE POWER OF A COMMON ENEMY

COMMUNICATING THE VISION

MAKING IT MEANINGFUL

MEASURING UNDERSTANDING

BREAKING DOWN THE VISION INTO GOALS

APPLYING PROCESS GOALS TO BUSINESS

CHAPTER 3 BUILDING A TEAM

THE POWER OF COLLECTIVE EFFORT

RECRUITING EXCELLENCE

CONDUCTING AN INTERVIEW

THE BEST FOR THE JOB

TRANSFORMING PEOPLE INTO TEAMS

TEAM THEORY

KNOW YOUR PEOPLE

TEAMSHIP RULES

ENGAGEMENT

ASSESSING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

CHAPTER 4 COMMUNICATION

BIG TALK AND LITTLE TALK

INTEGRITY AND CONSISTENCY

CONSISTENCY IN ACTION

TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION

EARN THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD

CREATING CLOSENESS

THE STORIES PEOPLE TELL

MODERN COMMUNICATION

MANAGING MEETINGS

PUBLIC SPEAKING

DELIVERING A SPEECH

CHAPTER 5 MOTIVATION AND INSPIRATION

MONEY DOESN’T MOTIVATE

INSPIRATIONAL LEADERS

PURPOSE

AUTONOMY AND MASTERY

THE POWER OF MORALE

MOTIVATION IN PRACTICE

CELEBRATING SUCCESS, COLLECTIVELY

COLLECTIVE INVOLVEMENT

LOYALTY AND AFFECTION

CLOSE, BUT NOT TOO CLOSE

CHAPTER 6 PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

WHAT IS HIGH PERFORMANCE?

SETTING THE TARGET

THE √, X, ? TEST

GETTING THE BALANCE RIGHT

DEALING WITH HIGH PERFORMERS

DEVELOPING PERFORMERS

DEALING WITH POOR PERFORMANCE

FIRING

CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS

A HIGH PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENT

CHAPTER 7 LEADING CHANGE

CHANGE HAPPENS ANYWAY

THE RIGHT SORT OF CHANGE

WHY MOST CHANGE INITIATIVES FAIL

A FORMULA FOR CHANGE

COMMUNICATING CHANGE

CREATE A COALITION

THE IMPORTANCE OF QUICK WINS

SUSTAIN THE CHANGE

CHAPTER 8 LEADING IN TURBULENT TIMES

LEADING THROUGH A CRISIS

THE EYE OF THE STORM

ACKNOWLEDGE THE CRISIS

TAKE DECISIVE AND QUICK ACTION

COMMUNICATE

DEALING WITH THE MEDIA

DEALING WITH A PR CRISIS

CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE

LEARN FROM THE EXPERIENCE

LOOKING AFTER YOURSELF

CONCLUSION

Index

This is the stuff you’ve always been embarrassed to ask about the world of modern business.

The What You Need to Know ... books can get you up to speed on a core business subject fast. Whether it’s for a new job, a new responsibility, or a meeting with someone you need to impress, these books will give you what you need to get by as someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Each book contains:

What It’s all About – a summary of key pointsWho You Need to Know – the basics about the key playersWho Said It – quotes from key figuresHow You Need to Do It – key steps to put your new-found knowledge into practiceWhat You Need to Read – books and online resources for if you want to deepen your knowledgeIf You Only Remember One Thing – a one-liner of the most important information

You might also want to know:

What You Need to Know about BusinessWhat You Need to Know about EconomicsWhat You Need to Know about Project ManagementWhat You Need to Know about StrategyWhat You Need to Know about MarketingWhat You Need to Know about Starting a Business

This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Jeff Grout and Liz Fisher

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

9780857081308 (paperback), ISBN 9780857082145 (ebook),

ISBN 9780857081681 (epub), ISBN 9780857081698 (emobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations. The fact that you have opened this book suggests that you have either been recently promoted to a leadership position, or expect to at some point in the future. Or, perhaps you are thinking of setting up your own business and want to know what to expect when you employ a team of workers. Either way, well done. You have ambition, but you are also wise enough to know that leadership is something you have to learn about, and not necessarily something that you are born knowing what to do.

People are called on to lead in all walks and at all stages of life – in sport and games when we are children, at work, in politics, and at times of crisis and uncertainty. But at no point does someone sit us down and tell us what to do, and what leadership is all about. When an eight-year-old is made captain of his football team, or a teenager is elected head boy or girl of their school, they have no real idea that they will be and are being a leader. They just do it. Some do it well, and some do it badly, and most just muddle through. And exactly the same thing applies when we get older.

Almost all of us, in our working lives, will at some stage in our career, be asked to lead someone (or, even better, a group of someones). A few will reach the very top of the business tree, and lead a large company. But the chances are that none of us will ever have had anything that could be described as formal training on how to lead. So, when we first find ourselves in a leadership situation we wonder, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to behave? And how on earth can I be sure that these people will do what I say?

Few of us could explain exactly what a leader is, what leadership means in an everyday context, and what works (or doesn’t). Almost all of us will have had bosses ourselves, though, and the chances are that a few of them were not very good. Perhaps some of these sound familiar:

The scary boss – he (or often she) is inapproachable, given to shouting and really quite intimidating. But people tend to do what they say, generally because to do otherwise would risk untold wrath.The distant boss – who sits in an office behind a closed door, sometimes in a different office. If you met them in a lift, you’d struggle to recognise them and they probably wouldn’t have much of a clue about you, either.The inept but nice boss – very friendly and great in social situations, but disorganised and frustrating to be around at work.The promoted-beyond boss – great at the mechanics of what they do, but without much of a clue about people management.The watch-yourself boss – pleasant and friendly on the outside but unlikely to protect you when things get tough, or prone to taking credit for someone else’s ideas or work.

Our experiences should tell us that there are many potential minefields to being a leader. It might be difficult to pin down exactly what someone is doing wrong, but few of us ever forget being led by a poor leader. But, on the other hand, we all remember and respect our good bosses – the ones who encouraged us to do our best, supported us, praised us quietly when we did well and accepted our mistakes with dignity. These are the people you want to emulate when you are a leader yourself.

This book is designed to help you become that boss. It covers all of the key issues that leaders have to face and deal with, and the key techniques that the best leaders use (and yes, they are techniques) to persuade people to follow them and to produce their best for them. The book is split into eight chapters:

1. What is Leadership?

2. Creating a Vision

3. Building a Team

4. Communication

5. Motivation and Inspiration

6. Performance Management

7. Leading Change

8. Leading in Turbulent Times

Because the business world is diverse, varied and unpredictable, and because every leader and every employee is different, we’ve used a lot of real-life examples from companies in range of industries, as well as the views and experiences of leaders in other disciplines, such as sport and the military, to explain some of the leadership theories we cover in the book. A leader is a leader in any field, and the best business leaders look well beyond their own horizons to learn whatever they can from others. Few people can claim to know more about leading men in stressful situations than military leaders, and they have important lessons to tell us.

Together, the material in the book should explain clearly to you how the best leaders gather talented people around them and persuade them to work to their limits in pursuit of a common goal, whatever that goal may be. And because no two organisations are the same and because life, particularly business life, is unpredictable, it will also tell you how to cope with the unexpected – and how the unexpected can, in fact, be a good thing.

There are some common features in each of these chapters, which add to the detail and point you in the direction of more information, should you want to follow anything up:

What it’s all about – The beginning of each chapter gives a quick summary of what you can expect.Who you need to know – A few of the important people you need to know in the field of leadership, including the best-known academics who have studied the subject, well-known writers on leadership and some high-profile business leaders.Who said it – Quotes from well-known leadership figures to inspire and remind you of the key pointsWhat you need to read – A few suggestions for further reading and online resources on the subjects covered in each chapter, should you want to explore some more.If you only remember one thing – A re-run of the most important idea in each chapter.

This is not a book about how to be a particular type of leader; it is a book about how to be yourself as a good leader. The best leaders are not actors – they are essentially being themselves. What is different about them is their ability to persuade, motivate and inspire others to be their best. And this is something that can be learned. So start reading, and bring out the future leader in you.