The leader from another point of view

Yesterday I was watching a basketball game on the tv and I was trying to identify the behaviours the the coaches had. In my opinion head coaches are a very good example of leaders and their behaviour is worth mentioning.

The most important thing in order to be a good coach-leader, is to have the ability to identify how to change your behaviour in different situations (ex. Score difference) to achieve the wanted results. It was amazing how they were changing behaviour during the game, when the team was performing well they were encouraging and motivating by saying well done etc. But also they the team was doing mistakes they were yelling at them and they were seeming very nervous.

This made me realize that a good leader can change behaviours and the way he treats his/her team. The team will expect these changes and they will know how to react. It is important for the team’s performance to be able to understand what the change in the behaviour means.

: 05 May 2009 14:26 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What is Leadership about?? Part 2

Writing about web page http://excellenceone.efqm.org/Default.aspx?tabid=345

Today it was I really interesting day. We had to work as a team and create our own definition of leadership. We tried to analyze the literature and figure out what is leadership about. Personally I found the some of the definitions a little bit “narrow” and maybe not so “modern”…… It is really difficult to capture in two lines the essence of leadership. I preferred the definition given in module notes “Excellent leaders develop and facilitate the achievement of the mission and vision. They develop organizational values and systems required for sustainable success and implement these via their actions and behaviours. During periods of change they retain a constancy of purpose. Where required, such leaders are able to change the direction of the organization and inspire others to follow." (EFQM, 2003)

During the discussion we had in our team we came out to the conclusion that you cannot define that characteristics that a perfect leader should have because it depends on the situation, the team’s maturity, team’s needs for motivation, task’s requirements etc. So the outcome was that a good leader should have the ability to identify each time what leadership characteristics he needs to show in order to take out the best from the team. We also thought what type of behaviour we would expect from our leader and with what behaviour we would be most motivated and effective.

And we come out with the conclusion that it is really hard to be a good leader. It is difficult for people to change their behaviour and adopt each time different leadership style in order to fit to the changing environment. Leaders need to inspire people, have a vision and communicate it to the team, identify what they want and motivate them, be good team players, be good listeners and also be able to give solutions to dead end situations, suggests alternatives, be innovative but most important of all is to be reliable and engage people to accomplish team’s common goals.

Leaders must have the ability to change their selves and influence and inspire others to follow them.....

: 22 Apr 2009 03:03 |  Tags: Definition Leadership |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

What is Leadership about?

What is Leadership about?

I think it is important to identify two different elements of leadership definition. The first element is the definition of leadership and the other element is how a good leader should be.

In my opinion leaders are the people that in particular situation they have the power to influence others and take decisions that affects their lives.

The second element is a bit more complicated as the perfect leader; the perfect leadership style depends on the different situation. A mature team with qualified members that need to generate idea and be innovative, needs a completely different style of leader in comparison with a team that is under a situation of emergency and is not performing well. Also some times the same team/people need different types of leadership, depends on the situation and on the task/project they need to achieve. So it is obvious that a good leader is the one that has the ability to identify how he must behave to his people, in different situation and in different tasks, in order to manage and take the best out of them; what they need in order to be motivated and what is the best way to communicate with them his vision.

: 21 Apr 2009 12:53 |  Tags: Effective Leader Leadership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem