Whatever you are, be a good one – Abraham Lincoln

With the snap General Election looming opinion polls abound, qualities of the leaders are being analysed, manifestos and policies are assessed and sound bites sought after.  It certainly feels as though there is a spotlight in this election campaign on leadership qualities and who can be trusted to lead the country and negotiate our exit from the EU

Leapfrog has recently been running Leadership and Management training workshops for Technica Solutions, an IT support company, so with all of this leadership talk, it feels like the right time to share our thoughts on what needs to be considered when leading a business.  To do this, we are going to highlight three ideas and thoughts from some of the great and good in management thinking:-

• Peter Drucker was a management consultant and a leader in the development of management education.  One aspect of his extensive research highlighted, 8 Practices of Effective Leaders.  Despite all the leaders, he researched, having varying leaderships styles, values and attitudes he arrived at the conclusion that they all did the following;
• They all asked the questions “What needs to be done and what is right for the enterprise?”
• They developed action plans.
• They took responsibility for making decisions and for communicating.
• They focused their attention on opportunities rather than problems.
• They ran productive meetings
• They thought and said “we” rather than “I.”

Q:  Our question to you as a business leader is – how many of these effective practices are you implementing?  If you are not implementing any of these leadership practices, are you putting any time aside to work on your business rather than just working in it?

• Daniel Goleman is an author, psychologist and science journalist who writes about leadership, the brain and behavioural sciences.  His best-selling book Emotional Intelligence, identified that a key trait of a good leader was one with high levels of emotional intelligence, one who has the capability to recognise and be aware of their own and other people’s emotions and then manage these emotions to guide their thinking and behaviour

Q:  How able would you say you are in positively managing your emotions and understanding and dealing with other’s emotions?  If you don’t feel confident in this area, is this then, negatively impacting upon your relationships internally and externally?

• Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric from 1981 – 2001 and during his tenure the company’s value grew by 4000%.  According to his autobiography, every 5 years he used to ask himself “what needs to be done now?” He then assessed for that particular action, which of the two or three top tasks he was best suited to undertake and which ones he should delegate.

Q:  What is your absolute priority, right now, to take your business forward? For this business priority which tasks should you be taking on and which ones should you be delegating?

If you need help in working on any of the issues above, or in developing your future leaders or have staff that are new to management please do contact us to discuss how we can help in any area of leadership and management coaching, training or to facilitate a workshop.