How to be an Effective Leader - Workplace Leadership
67Being an Effective Leader
Over the many years that I have been employed in the retail industry and specifically as a retail manager I have attended many Leadership Training Seminars and Leadership workshops. For the most part I found each of them very interesting and enlightening. The really remarkable thing to me has been that each one of these training courses have pretty much all approached the subject differently and yet still managed to cover the exact same core topics.
Effective Communication
Goal Setting
Coaching
Problem Solving
Team Building
Now please do not misunderstand these are great topics and an Effective Leader should have a good understanding of all of them, But in my opinion there are a few other topics that are seldom touched on and every bit as important when considering ways to become an effective leader.
Leadership Skills
Because there are several effective leadership traits that are frequently overlooked in the leadership development courses a number of potentially great managers and supervisors walk away shaking their heads and feeling like they missed something.
Workplace Leadership
Workplace Leadership to me is the real world. In the classroom or meeting hall it is very easy to imagine yourself putting into action all those wonderful job skills and leadership qualities that you are hearing about. It is not so easy once the real world intrudes. Leadership training tends to over look the human factor in any business.
The human factor is but should not be overlooked when attempting to educate someone on the qualities of an effective leader. Being an effective leader means knowing and understanding how and why people react the way they do to a given situation.
This is the first of a series of articles that will address the concepts of Workplace Leadership by taking into account the unpredictable nature of the human factor.
Workplace leadership concept
The concept of my workplace leadership articles is to provide a real life hands on practical idea of the world of effective leadership.
The leadership topics that will be included in this series are:
Performance Coaching
Time Management
Building Your Team
Teamwork Reflects Leadership
"Teamwork reflects Leadership" was a line in one of my favorite old movies "Remember the Titans"
I have never heard a more truthful statement. Every team success and every team failure belongs to the team leaders.
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Implement employer employee loyalty as a two way street. Businesses and Universities are into a phase of creative disassembly where reinvention and adjustments are constant. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being shed by Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Sam’s Club, Wells Fargo Bank, HP, Starbucks etc. and the state, counties and cities. Even solid world class institutions like the University of California Berkeley under the leadership of Chancellor Birgeneau & Provost Breslauer are firing employees, staff, faculty and part-time lecturers through “Operational Excellence (OE) initiative”: 1,000 fired. Yet many employees, professionals and faculty cling to old assumptions about one of the most critical relationship of all: the implied, unwritten contract between employer and employee.
Until recently, loyalty was the cornerstone of that relationship. Employers promised work security and a steady progress up the hierarchy in return for employees fitting in, accepting lower wages, performing in prescribed ways and sticking around. Longevity was a sign of employer-employee relations; turnover was a sign of dysfunction. None of these assumptions apply today. Organizations can no longer guarantee work and careers, even if they want to. Senior managements paralyzed themselves with an attachment to “success brings success’ rather than “success brings failure’ and are now forced to break the implied contract with their employees – a contract nurtured by management that the future can be controlled.
Jettisoned employees are finding that their hard won knowledge, skills and capabilities earned while being loyal are no longer valuable in the employment market place.
What kind of a contract can employers and employees make with each other?
The central idea is both simple and powerful: the job or position is a shared situation. Employers and employees face market and financial conditions together, and the longevity of the partnership depends on how well the for-profit or not-for-profit continues to meet the needs of customers and constituencies. Neither employer nor employee has a future obligation to the other. Organizations train people. Employees develop the kind of security they really need – skills, knowledge and capabilities that enhance future employability. The partnership can be dissolved without either party considering the other a traitor.
Let there be light!
this is good post,thank you for article.
websclubs 23 months ago
Hi Ohma,
Welcome to Hubpages!
All approached the subject differently--
Very interesting and enlightening hub.
a wonderful idea. Thank You!