Leadership Value

Leadership Value

Introduction

The leader's job is to set the organization's vision. Once it is established, staff must be brought into in the execution and implementation of that vision. Personal leadership and motivational leadership are the same. To lead others successfully, you must first become a role model.

Leadership is about doing what's right. Leadership is not about doing what's popular. Corporate results will be based on your ability to be authentic and have integrity. Consider leadership as a three-legged stool standing on vision, integrity and compassion. Remove one leg and the whole thing topples. Let's examine each one (Friedman, 1998).

As the leader, your vision paints the target. It sparks and fuels the fire within the organization and draws everyone forward, and it illuminates the way others are to follow. When you create the vision, adopt a philosophy of long-term, pro-active thinking. Let everyone know how the vision will change the organization.

Discussion

Having created and clarified the vision, you must market it to get a wholehearted buy-in from the people responsible for executing it. A shared vision involves everyone working together to make improvements. Without buy-in from your people, it cannot succeed. As a leader, you have an opportunity to create a vision for your people that enable them to bring the corporate vision to fruition.

As a person of integrity, you have the supreme responsibility to tell the truth, to mean what you say and to say what you mean — regardless of the outcome. Do you promise your people that, if they meet a tight deadline by working overtime and weekends, you'll remember that effort during their performance evaluation — and do you then renege, perhaps using the excuse of poor profits? Your integrity just took a hit. Don't be surprised when your people no longer trust you, or refuse to go the ...