23 April, 2008
The ultimate follower
I was tempted to name this post "In praise of followers"* because this is exactly what I want to outline.
For too long companies made it appear that leadership was the ultimate goal for a successful career, ignoring to nurture followership skills.
Take a look at that article if you are interested to understand the "effective follower"...and take away the following advice: choose a great leader and follow him, sink him in, obey him and be proud of him.
Your life is gonna be easy...nanos gigantum humeris insidentes ("dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants")
*By Robert E. Kelley, Harvard business review, 66(6), 142 - 148
For too long companies made it appear that leadership was the ultimate goal for a successful career, ignoring to nurture followership skills.
Take a look at that article if you are interested to understand the "effective follower"...and take away the following advice: choose a great leader and follow him, sink him in, obey him and be proud of him.
Your life is gonna be easy...nanos gigantum humeris insidentes ("dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants")
*By Robert E. Kelley, Harvard business review, 66(6), 142 - 148
Labels: Leadership
10 April, 2008
Bones and muscles
Fortunately, despite all human flaws, many leaders kicked in. To some extent, it's possible to observe many beneficial traits and reason out some recurrent patterns.
As I see it, a leader is dominated by two main forces: a vast skill set and knowledge and what is called "effective attitude".
The first force is potentially within anybody's grasp.
The latter one is what I generally refer to as the trait without a name. You can't actually create it "from nil". Yet you can pull it out, shape it and ameliorate it (assuming there is something there :-)
In a previous comment I used the bones methaphor, it goes as follow: "being a leader is a matter of bones, if you got them you can put on muscles and coach them."
However, not being a leader is very very convenient...check out the upcoming post.
As I see it, a leader is dominated by two main forces: a vast skill set and knowledge and what is called "effective attitude".
The first force is potentially within anybody's grasp.
The latter one is what I generally refer to as the trait without a name. You can't actually create it "from nil". Yet you can pull it out, shape it and ameliorate it (assuming there is something there :-)
In a previous comment I used the bones methaphor, it goes as follow: "being a leader is a matter of bones, if you got them you can put on muscles and coach them."
However, not being a leader is very very convenient...check out the upcoming post.
Labels: Leadership
08 April, 2008
Leaders for sale
Do you want to know why you'll never see a "true" leader in action? Let's think about the huge amount of material available and try to draw the simplest conclusion.
Who will be so supernatural to incarnate those attitudes? Did you ever deeply read those publications and thought of any possible implication?
Please, now think of a person who shows: passion, vision, delegation, intelligence, realism, listening, decisiveness, flexibility, and so on.
Come on guys, let's be real!
Not to mention who tries to sell and convince that there is a leader in you. You only need practice et voila' you wake up and say: I'm a leader!
Come on guys, don't buy it. It's a gyp.
My conclusion? Well, have you ever thought of that human beings are flawed? Oh yes!, good time then to start and see from a more realistic and human perspective what's going on in here :-)
Stay tuned, new posts on this around the corner.
Who will be so supernatural to incarnate those attitudes? Did you ever deeply read those publications and thought of any possible implication?
Please, now think of a person who shows: passion, vision, delegation, intelligence, realism, listening, decisiveness, flexibility, and so on.
Come on guys, let's be real!
Not to mention who tries to sell and convince that there is a leader in you. You only need practice et voila' you wake up and say: I'm a leader!
Come on guys, don't buy it. It's a gyp.
My conclusion? Well, have you ever thought of that human beings are flawed? Oh yes!, good time then to start and see from a more realistic and human perspective what's going on in here :-)
Stay tuned, new posts on this around the corner.
Labels: Leadership
08 June, 2007
Free flow of meaning
Trying to define what makes a real project manager, very often we tend to list many characteristics that a leader should have without categorizing them at all.
I came across one of those lists during a course and the first thought that sprang to my mind was: from where do they originate? What lies behind them?
I thought the couple IQ/EQ might be useful here. I’m not pretty convinced about the outright effectiveness of this method for quantifying our intelligence however, we have no valuable alternatives.
Let’s have a look at the following quadrant.
One dimension is EQ (emotional quotient) and the other is IQ (intelligence quotient).
EQ is a measure of how well we can get in contact with people, openly and candidly. It is our personal prosperity that works to advantage for every single person involved in our project. It is easy now to put under this category a bunch of characteristics.
On the other hand, IQ is a measure of how effectively we can critically examine our EQ! It balances our gut instinct with data, figures and realism. It is the attitude to thinking systematically, how much intellectual rigor we apply in working out problems.
Nevertheless, the "free flow of meaning" is not simply the sum of them. It reminds me the concept of holism but let’s stop here :-) -
For my Italian readers, see my previous post on the leadership.
I came across one of those lists during a course and the first thought that sprang to my mind was: from where do they originate? What lies behind them?
I thought the couple IQ/EQ might be useful here. I’m not pretty convinced about the outright effectiveness of this method for quantifying our intelligence however, we have no valuable alternatives.
Let’s have a look at the following quadrant.
One dimension is EQ (emotional quotient) and the other is IQ (intelligence quotient).EQ is a measure of how well we can get in contact with people, openly and candidly. It is our personal prosperity that works to advantage for every single person involved in our project. It is easy now to put under this category a bunch of characteristics.
On the other hand, IQ is a measure of how effectively we can critically examine our EQ! It balances our gut instinct with data, figures and realism. It is the attitude to thinking systematically, how much intellectual rigor we apply in working out problems.
Nevertheless, the "free flow of meaning" is not simply the sum of them. It reminds me the concept of holism but let’s stop here :-) -
For my Italian readers, see my previous post on the leadership.
Labels: Leadership
25 May, 2006
Formazione
Di recente ho seguito una serie di corsi su svariati argomenti. Quello che ho notato in maniera pressoché costante è che i trainer tendono a dare informazioni piuttosto che strumenti di reale improvement (formazione).
Difficile che ti dicano come fare una stima, come migliorare la comunicazione, ecc. E qui siamo nel campo della tecnica, delle cose che chiunque (o quasi) può apprendere!
Il guaio è quando poi si pretende di dare lezioni su argomenti che sollecitano la parte pre-cablata di ognuno di noi, ovvero con il tuo modo di essere.
Nel campo della leadership, ad esempio, si omette per ingenuità (o al contrario per scaltrezza) che non tutti possono essere leader, che la leadership pesca nel modo di essere e vivere di ognuno di noi e che nessuna tecnica può mai (nell'ordinario) farci trasformare in leader vincenti (ma avete mai letto certo tipo di pubblicazione a riguardo?)
Si possono avere dei lievi miglioramenti, aggiustamenti, limature. Mi chiedo: ma non sarebbe più onesto dire a queste persone che è meglio fare altro, valorizzarsi in altri ambiti?
Difficile che ti dicano come fare una stima, come migliorare la comunicazione, ecc. E qui siamo nel campo della tecnica, delle cose che chiunque (o quasi) può apprendere!
Il guaio è quando poi si pretende di dare lezioni su argomenti che sollecitano la parte pre-cablata di ognuno di noi, ovvero con il tuo modo di essere.
Nel campo della leadership, ad esempio, si omette per ingenuità (o al contrario per scaltrezza) che non tutti possono essere leader, che la leadership pesca nel modo di essere e vivere di ognuno di noi e che nessuna tecnica può mai (nell'ordinario) farci trasformare in leader vincenti (ma avete mai letto certo tipo di pubblicazione a riguardo?)
Si possono avere dei lievi miglioramenti, aggiustamenti, limature. Mi chiedo: ma non sarebbe più onesto dire a queste persone che è meglio fare altro, valorizzarsi in altri ambiti?
Labels: IT, Leadership
23 October, 2005
Leadership
Non so come si diventa leader. Posso solo dire che osservandone uno vero si registrano le seguenti dinamiche:
- E' circondato da persone che generalmente comprendono in anticipo le sue richieste
- Le persone reputano un arricchimento seguirlo
- L'autorità è riconosciuta coralmente (o quasi...) e non per imposizione
- Le persone si sentono considerate anche al di là degli interessi contingenti
...e le seguenti capacità:
- tende a valorizzare ogni persona secondo le proprie caratteristiche
- lavora duro, non si inchioda in meeting inutili o fogli excel super-decorati
- delega ma non per incompetenza o peggio per de-responsabilizzarsi
- non fa scenate
- sa controllare la sua invidia (l'invidia è quasi ineliminabile dalle ossa di un uomo)
- non confonde il singolo con il gruppo. Il gruppo in ultima analisi è solo una astrazione, meglio parlare di collaboratori
- è competente, riesce con naturalezza a passare dalla big picture ai problemi contingenti
- è uno scudo per il team e una freccia per il cliente
E poi leader un po' anche si nasce...altrimenti si assume che è solo una technicality da apprendere (gli americani in questo fanno davvero ridere :-))
Labels: Leadership
