Leadership Development for Success

In today's highly competitive world, there is a lot of pressure on leaders to create highly productive organizations. To be successful with this task, leaders will need all of the talent, skills, techniques, and experience they can muster through leadership development. The pressure to succeed can create a real dilemma: whether to "manage" people or to "lead" people. At CMOE, we maintain that in order to achieve high levels of employee engagement and morale, people in authority must learn how to show others the way, be a "lighthouse," rather than to "railroad" people into compliance by telling, commanding, or controlling them. Respected leaders easily gain loyalty and mutual agreement with their followers (loyalty demanded is loyalty denied).

Leaders who earn the respect and commitment of their followers demonstrate qualities and characteristics that run deeper than leadership skills, techniques, and knowledge alone. Effective leaders lead by example and exhibit their true character consistently. This in turn causes people to voluntarily support an organization's mission and purpose. They know that leadership is a privilege. It means you have to consistently do the right thing for the right reasons. Good leadership is an inner choice. It is character based. Good leaders will give your organization a competitive edge; bogus leadership, on the other hand, will cost you in critical times when you need the support of followers the most.

There are basically three kinds of leaders in organizations today: unsuccessful ones, those who are occasionally successful, and those who consistently maintain the commitment of followers on a long term basis. The third type requires an understanding of the finer qualities of leadership, character, and values. Character based leadership cannot be achieved by arrogant or power-hungry managers who choose to intimidate others. Sometimes those in authority feel driven to be overly aggressive, take short cuts, and do what is expedient versus doing what is right. Others will make a "Wall Street driven" decision that is not focused on the long term well being of stockholders, customers, or employees.

In CMOE's leadership training, we acquaint participants with (or reaffirm) the fundamental qualities and characteristics leaders need to possess. For example, in our leadership development training, we examine the quality of courage. Leaders will always be required to make the right decisions and manage dilemmas. They must also take risks and at times withstand the ridicule from others. Courage is the strength to choose and stand for the right course of action. Leaders will experience failure (the great teacher), and leaders must respond courageously to failure and take responsibility. Owning up to a failed action, learning from it, and adjusting your course is a courageous act. Giving someone bad news, confronting a sensitive conflict, and giving feedback to others takes skill, tact, and most definitely courage. Courage can only come from deep within one's being. In CMOE's leadership development, we help leaders improve or strengthen this characteristic.

It is this courage that distinguishes great leaders from those who have skills but don't convert their knowledge to proper actions and decisions. Courage, rather than power, position, or techniques, defines great leadership.

Leadership without character will eventually create "motivation fall out." Without genuine leadership, people will not set up and contribute their talents and energy. If they feel manipulated with "slick" techniques they will withdraw their support and loyalty. In our leadership development curriculum, we connect leaders with qualities like:

Inclusiveness / Collaboration
Integrity
Accountability
Accessibility & Humility
Credibility

This is a time when we need leaders and members alike who can move forward, think positively, and act creatively. Character based leadership provides the foundation for building skills and confidence.

For more information about CMOE's 30 years of experience in leadership development, call toll free at 1-888-262-2499.

More resources:

RELATED ARTICLES

Extraordinary People in Mediocre Times
My grandfather used to speak of the days when people drove the world. It was a time when people were proud to contribute and move society and industry forward at full steam.

Leadership Development and Jumping Out of Airships
A German silent film melodrama depicts an airship bombing London during World War I. Lit up by searchlights and strafed by fighters, the crippled airship loses altitude as the captain frantically jettisons dispensable gear to lighten weight.

Leadership Is Action?Not Position!
People respond to good leadership! Period! It is in all aspects of our lives, not just business. A mother is a leader in her home; a son may be leader of a team sport or a daughter the leader of the debate team.

Leaders Click It" Into Gear!
"Click It" Into Gear!Ever wonder how two people can be in the same meeting, hear the same speaker communicate the same message - yet once the meeting is over, each person's perception of the event is totally different?Why the different perception? How can one individual think the meeting was terrific and leave completely inspired and motivated, yet the other person walks away believing the total opposite?Answer: "THE CLICK" (More on this in a minute!)Picture yourself being told that your department is about to undergo a major downsizing. (Not a pretty picture, to be sure.

Ten Ways Women Can Visualize Themselves As Leaders
Women should not be afraid of or feel guilty about taking a leadership role--in their organization, in their community, in their own lives. What could you accomplish if you were leading your life instead of simply living your life?1.

What Kind of Leader Are You?
You are a leader if someone is following you. This could be as simple as one person watching you and following your example and encouragement, to being a leader in your home, your community, your workplace or even your nation.

Leadership and Followership in a Team Setting
Many solopreneurs work in a team environment either with their client's staff, or with subcontractors. Having spent over 20 years in a teaming environment before becoming a solopreneur 13 years ago, I know that during the course of any highly functioning team effort, the leadership and followership roles flow back and forth between the members.

Choose Your Best Life: Where Are Your Choices Leading You?
According to the dictionary choice means "to select freely after consideration, to have a preference for, to take an alternative and of high caliber." Based on this definition, I believe choice is the act of careful selection, identifying preferences and exploring quality alternatives that lead to freedom.

The Incandescence Of The Human Spirit
There lives within every individual a power, an energy, an incandescence of spirit that is being constantly held in check, like a dimmer switch turned way down.A lifetime of being told: "we are nothing special; to stand out is egotistic and wrong; to conform is necessary; to be different is bad; the collective good must be served even to the determent of our own being; we must support; we must never defy; to question authority is inherently evil; the majority is always right; don't rock the boat;" -- creates an habitual thought pattern of lassitude, often leaving us without any sense of our ability to make a substantial difference and therefore with no real sense of urgency.

Peek Inside The Heads of Amazingly Successful Leaders
Would you like to know what really goes on inside the heads of astoundingly successful leaders? Here is your chance. Part of the research for my book Absolutely Fabulous Organizational Change? involved highly successful executives filling-out my Abilities & Behavior Forecaster? pre-employment test.

3 Dynamic Techniques To Boost Your Executive Leadership!
Here's a really simple way to measure the strength of your executive leadership skills. Ask your people to name 3 important reasons why they enjoy working with you.

A Winning Choice for Leadership!
"The only way to enjoy anything in this life, is to earn it first." -Ginger RodgersOne bad apple can spoil the bunch! As a leader, we cannot allow "bad apples" to interrupt our efforts toward achieving our goals.

10 Ways to Develop Your Latent Leader
latent (adj.) - Not visible or apparent, but capable of developing or being expressed; dormant.

The Flexible Leadership Workshop
The Leadership ChallengeLeaders in today's society are faced with an increasingly complex challenge: To deliver business results in the face of rapidly changing conditions, while building team members' capacity to address the future. While organizations are becoming generally flatter, less hierarchical, less "command-and-control," individual managers must still determine which leadership style to employ.

Ask Yourself Whats In It For WE?
"Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress.

Leadership and Change in a Holographic Universe
Have you ever noticed that since the early part of the 20th century, nearly every new scientific theory manages to sound more and more like the same sort of metaphysical philosophies science once dismissed? Well, it's happening again and this time our views on the structure of the universe, the power of human consciousness and even the nature of reality itself are being challenged by a startling new finding: that many hard to explain events and scientific puzzles become suddenly clear and easily understood if we consider that everything we see and experience around us is not in fact a physical reality, but rather our own interpretation of an infinitely large, dynamic and multidimensional hologram, constructed by and interpreted through our own consciousness.Most people are familiar with the concept of a graphic hologram - an image imprinted on a special film that, when illuminated with a certain type of laser, projects a 3-dimensional picture that you can view from any angle.

Creating Unlimited Belief for Success!
What's holding your team back from experiencing "breakout performance"?It may be those Old beliefs and Personal Insecurities. (aka: conceptual barriers)Conceptual barriers are the barriers that are right behind the eyes, DEEP within the brain.

Is Your Life Ready For Groundhog Day?
In the hit comedic movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character, Phil Conners, is caught up in a time warp, doomed to live the same day over and over until he gets it right. Hilarious as the ensuing mayhem may be on the big screen, it is a poignant and not too thinly veiled metaphor for how most of us live our own lives - mindlessly occupied with our own issues and concerns, stumbling through life (often over the toes of others) with little if any conscious direction or critical thought.

The Leadership Talk As A Living Hologram
The hologram is a three-dimensional photograph made on a flat surface with laser beams.The three-dimensionality of such an image is not the only remarkable characteristic of a hologram.

How to Become a Great Leader & Improve Your Leadership Skills
A great leader is able to inspire his/her workers to work harder. Instead of firing workers, great leaders know how to fire his/her worker up to do their best.