Strategies for taking charge

Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus

Leadership is about character. Character is a continuously evolving thing. The process of becoming a leader is much the same as becoming an integrated human being.

To keep organizations competitive, leaders must be instrumental in creating a social architecture capable of generating intellectual capital.

We cannot emphasize the significance of a string determination to achieve a goal or realize a vision.The first task of a leader is to define reality.

The capacity to generate and sustain trust is the central ingredient in leadership.

Mr Rabin, the Israeli leader had the most important attribute in leadership- authenticity. He put on no airs, he had no masks, what you saw was what you got.

True leaders enlist people to their vision through their optimism and honesty

Leaders have a bias towards action that results in success.

The new leader is someone who converts leaders into agents of change.

These days POWER is conspicuous in its absence. Powerlessness in the face of crisis, powerlessness in the face o complexity. Leaders who are power hungry and doomed to fail.

Credibility is at a premium these days because every word and action of the leader is scrutinized.

The information age has hatched a public awareness that makes a managerial environment a petri dish.

When a man or woman opts for leadership and assumes responsibility, he or she also surrenders privacy.

Look at the flow of books on leadership over thirty years : Theory Y, Up the organization, New culture, Dissipative structures, Thriving on Chaos, The new realities, The age of paradox.They show the challenge of being a leader today.

Leadership is the most studied and least understood topic of all social sciences.

A business short on capital can borrow money, one with a poor location can move. But, a business short on leadership has little chance of survival.

Leaders see themselves as different from managers, leaders focus on perspective, vision, culture. They don’t spend time on how tos, but more on DOING THE RIGHT THING.

Leaders direct new trends

Leaders are the most results oriented individuals, an results get attention.

A huge but rare quality of very good leaders ( very few have it) is the ability NOT to waste the time of subordinates and teams. This comes from clarity and not wanting to do too much. The opposite of this is the checklist leader who rarely inspires.

Most leaders have rich and deeply textured, full of jargon agendas. The key to being a good leader is to communicate and communicate in a simple manner devoid of jargon.

Leaders who communicate meaning create a commonwealth of learning. That is what effective organizations are about.

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work. Trust implies accountability, predictability and reliability. Many leaders shy away from accountability and hence lose trust of their people!!

Leaders are reliable and tirelessly persistent.

The management of self is critical, without this leaders do more harm than good. Poor management of self leads to derailer behavior.

Leaders need positive self regard, they need to feel good about themselves. Recognizing strengths and weaknesses is the first step. The second is to nurture skills with discipline

Leaders always look for improvement, they are always asking : ‘how can we do this better?’

Leaders have a capacity to approach problems and relationships from the present rather than the past. They rarely look back except to learn.

A leader’s job is to take risks, and when he/she takes risks, not everyone will be happy.

The most memorable quality of leaders we studied is the way they responded to failure.For most people , failure is a finality, for leaders it is a new beginning.

Most leaders spend a lot of time interacting with people in the company and outside it. Good leaders are great ASKERS, they are always asking for ways the company can be better.

A collegial decision making style shows a leader who is participative, encourages a bottom up flow of ideas and someone who looks for consensus.In this model the team needs to look for peer recognition and not power.

A personality type of leadership is to ‘ walk tall’ both in words and deeds.

The formal style uses distance, formal rules and procedures to drive decisions.

For trust to be generated , there must be predictability in behavior.

Leaders are perpetual learners.

A good leader does not control or dominate or manipulate.