Leadership Done Right

Brandon W. Jones

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Leadership

The Correlation Between Goals, Expectations, And Success

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One of my main goals as a leader is to have success. Success comes in many forms. Seeing a big project get completed, helping an employee improve and overcome a weakness, hitting a budget target, meeting customer needs and keeping them satisfied, and implementing a new procedure within the given parameters are all forms of success. There are many other forms of success that you will see in your career.

Success

One important aspect of success is that success is in the eye of the beholder.  What one person sees as success may be failure to someone else.  Success is dependent on your expectations.  If you reach your expectations, you will feel successful whereas if you don’t meet them, you will probably not feel successful.

Expectations

In order to be successful, you need to set correct expectations.  You need to set your expectations based on your own desires and abilities.  It is very easy to get caught up thinking that you should set your goals based off of someone’s past performance, when in reality you should set your goals based on your past performance. I have seen many cases where one person is successful in a specific way so the next person has to have the same success in the same way for them to be as successful. [Read more…] about The Correlation Between Goals, Expectations, And Success

This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 6/13/2012

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The calling/responsibility of leadership is an important responsibility.  You must take it seriously because what you do as a leader each day has a major impact on where you end up long term.  The posts below are great posts because they help you to understand how to be a better leader.

Great Leaders Develops Both Themselves And Those They Lead By Beth Miller

Congratulations! You’ve worked hard to be a leader in your company. But don’t think you can sit back and relax from now on because great leaders understand that they must always be developing themselves and their employees.

Leaders lead others, but sometimes they don’t realize that the best leaders never stop improving themselves; they are passionate about learning and teaching, and their passion spreads to those who work around them.

It has been said that leaders are discovered, but really they are developed. Success is an ongoing process of improvement and adjustments.

Brandon’s Thoughts
As Beth pointed out, leaders must focus on their own improvement on a regular basis.  They must also focus on the development of those they lead.  As they train those they lead, they improve their team and the skills of their group.  The training helps their team be more successful because it will increase the overall skills.  Many leaders have a fear that training their followers is bad because it will make their followers replace them as the leader.  In reality, the opposite is more often the truth; the leaders that train their followers to be successful end up being more successful themselves.  By helping others succeed, they help themselves to move up the ladder because people see them as effective leaders. [Read more…] about This Week’s Top 5 Leadership Posts – 6/13/2012

How Do You Set The Tone As The Leader?

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Since I entered the workforce, I have seen leaders that were very strict and ones that were very lenient. I have also seen leaders that were happy and relaxed, as well as, ones that were very stressed, unhappy, and constantly tense.

Leadership Tone

There are many other types of leaders as well. All the leaders I have seen, however, have one thing in common. They all seem to set the tone for those they lead. With each tone the leader sets, there was a different mood or environment. Each of the different leaders has a strong influence on the feelings and mood of those they lead.

Strict Leadership

I once worked under a strict leader. He followed all the rules and kept a tight leash on everyone. This made everyone tense and uptight. The leader kept a strong hand on what people did and didn’t do. He was also very quick to get rid of people when they disobeyed the rules and/or didn’t work hard enough. It didn’t take long and everyone was not only following the rules, but they were working as hard as they could.

This leader was able to keep everyone working hard all the time, but wasn’t always able to keep the people happy or in the group. Under this leader, as well as other leaders like this, it is not uncommon to see people come and go quickly and frequently. [Read more…] about How Do You Set The Tone As The Leader?

The Difference Between A Leader And A Controller

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Recently I received a request to talk about the difference between leadership and the control of others.  So what is the difference?  Do you lead or control others?  In leadership it may seem like there is a fine line between controlling others and leading them, but in reality they are completely different.  The biggest difference between the two is choice and accountability.

The Controller

The controller uses a completely different set of tactics than a leader.  They don’t give people the freedom to make choices.  They use threats.  For example, you may hear them say, “If you don’t do _______, I won’t do ______ for you.”  Or you may even hear them say, “You do this, or you will get it.”  You can fill in your own blanks.

Those who control others are very dominant on the outside, but insecure on the inside.  They have the tendency to control because they don’t trust their followers.  They don’t think people will follow them unless they are controlling over them.  The controller also uses manipulation and/or blackmail.  They tell people that if they don’t follow them, they will hold it against them. [Read more…] about The Difference Between A Leader And A Controller

Management Or Leadership? Both!

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This is a guest post by D. Scott Smith. He is the CEO of Earth Fortification Supplies Company and a board member for Pajaggle, Inc.  He also held the position of COO for Gibson Holders and logistics operation manager at Hewlett-Packard.  He holds a bachelor of science in finance from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University Of Phoenix.
Twitter: @d_scott
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dscottsmith
Blog: d-scott-smith.com

Are you a better Leader or Manager? Is one better than the other? You’ve heard, “manage processes, lead people” seems simple; yet defining a Manager is relatively simple, while defining a Leader is like putting words to emotion. If Management is prose, Leadership is Poetry. Much thought has been poured into the definitions; pounds of books have been written to define and develop Leaders. We need practical applications of the concepts to make our businesses and organizations better. Gleaning from the works of others we can compile practical and workable definitions.

The goal is to run solid organizations; Management and Leadership are tools to help us fulfill that goal. It is a natural conclusion that we need to understand the tools and how we (personally) use them. You might have strengths in one over the other; in that case you can develop your own ability to wield the tool, or if you have the resources – hire the skill. Conducting a personal evaluation requires the specific skills of Managers and Leaders be defined. The definitions provide a framework for us to gauge our relative abilities and determine where to find opportunities for improvement. [Read more…] about Management Or Leadership? Both!

Why Don’t People Change?

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Isaac Newton was able to come up with some incredible advancements in the world of mathematics and science during his day.  Some of those advancements were:

  • Newton’s Three Laws of Motion
  • The development of the infinitesimal calculus
  • The discovery of refraction of light
  • Newton’s Laws of Universal Gravitation

Do you think Newton came up with all these discoveries on his own?  Did he have any information or knowledge to start from?  Newton was quoted as saying,

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1675

Standing on the Shoulders Of Giants

As a leader in math and science, Newton understood the importance of learning from others.  He took the knowledge he received from others and improved on it to make things better.  He constantly studied the practices of previous scientists and mathematicians so he could come up with new discoveries. [Read more…] about Why Don’t People Change?