I'm in the middle of reading The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner. This is an excellent book I highly recommend. When I have more time I'll go into greater detail but I wanted to post very briefly on practice one of the five practices of exemplary leadership: Model the Way.
How often do "leaders" sabotage themselves because they don't practice what they preach? I'm reminded of the old adage "what you ARE screams so loud I can't here what you're SAYING". Sometimes we put the cart before the horse by worrying about the message more than the messenger (ourselves). Covey talks about the need to have our private victories (mastery of self) before public victories.
Kouzes and Posner sum it up perfectly. Effective leaders must model the very behavior they seek for their organization. And it's no coincidence that Model the Way is the first of the five practices. Effective leadership starts with the leader. If the leader has not internalized exemplary leadership practices himself or herself, he or she cannot expect exemplary "followership" from the organization. We'll talk more about this in an upcoming post.
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2 comments:
Great post. I think this is what any leader needs to do to their point across correctly.
Thanks for the tip on the book.. Not modeling what leaders want of others is a sure way of loosing credibility and infleunce. I've seen lots of that.
The other thing of note as well is how good staff/employees are at spotting inconstencies. Meaning if a leader/manager behaves in a certain way on a regular basis, then all of a sudden things change, even subtly, people pick up on that. They begin to question and even doubt the motives behind the actions. It is imperative that managers/ leaders be open and transparent about what they're doing and why. In one particular case I recall a manager had gone on a great training program, learned lots of good things, and had decided to put them into practice, shifting work styles and behavours significantly. He didn't tell anyone. I'm sure you can imagine the fall-out.
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