Awaken the Leader in You: 10 Easy Steps to Developing Your Leadership Skills By Sharif Khan

"The miracle power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave determined spirit." - Mark Twain

Many motivational experts like to say that leaders are made, not born. I would argue the exact opposite. I believe we are all natural born leaders, but have been deprogrammed along the way. As children, we were natural leaders - curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted, were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted, and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? What happened?

As children, over time, we got used to hearing, No, Don't, and Can't. No! Don't do this. Don't do that. You can't do this. You can't do that. No! Many of our parents told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn't do and what was possible. Then many of us got hit with the big one institutionalized formal education known as college or university. Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesn't teach students how to become leaders; it teaches students how to become polite order takers for the corporate world. Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant, and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.

Developing the Leader in you to live your highest life, then, requires a process of unlearning by self-remembering and self-honoring. Being an effective leader again will require you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart. Based on my over ten years research in the area of human development and leadership, here are ten easy steps you can take to awaken the Leader in you and rekindle your passion for greatness.

1. Humility. Leadership starts with humility. To be a highly successful leader, you must first humble yourself like a little child and be willing to serve others. Nobody wants to follow someone who is arrogant. Be humble as a child, always curious, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge. For what is excellence but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge - always wanting to better yourself, always improving, always growing. When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people because you want to learn from them. And because you want to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener, which is the #1 leadership communication tool. When people sense you are genuinely interested in them, and listening to them, they will naturally be interested in you and listen to what you have to say.

2. SWOT Yourself. SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Although it's a strategic management tool taught at Stanford and Harvard Business Schools and used by large multinationals, it can just as effectively be used in your own professional development as a leader. This is a useful key to gain access to self-knowledge, self-remembering, and self-honoring. Start by listing all your Strengths including your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses and what needs to be improved. Make sure to include any doubts, anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic. By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see available to you for using your strengths. Finally, write down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking you or that you think you will encounter along the way to achieving your dreams.

3. Follow Your Bliss. Regardless of how busy you are, always take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital person vitalizes others. When you are pursuing your passions, people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your presence. This will make you a charismatic leader. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing, be it writing, acting, painting, drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking, or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities. Believe me, you'll find the time. If you were to video tape yourself for a day, you would be shocked to see how much time goes to waste!

4. Dream Big. If you want to be larger than life, you need a dream that's larger than life. Small dreams won't serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and be Bold! Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites you the most. Remember, don't be small and realistic; be bold and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Oscar, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field. After you ve written down your dream, list every single reason why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why you can't.

5. Vision. Without a vision, we perish. If you can't see yourself winning that award and feel the tears of triumph streaming down your face, it's unlikely you will be able to lead yourself or others to victory. Visualize what it would be like accomplishing your dream. See it, smell it, taste it, hear it, feel it in your gut.

6. Perseverance. Victory belongs to those who want it the most and stay in it the longest. Now that you have a dream, make sure you take consistent action every day. I recommend doing at least 5 things every day that will move you closer to your dream.

7. Honor Your Word. Every time you break your word, you lose power. Successful leaders keep their word and their promises. You can accumulate all the toys and riches in the world, but you only have one reputation in life. Your word is gold. Honor it.

8. Get a Mentor. Find yourself a mentor. Preferably someone who has already achieved a high degree of success in your field. Don't be afraid to ask. You've got nothing to lose. Mentors.ca is an excellent mentoring website and a great resource for finding local mentoring programs. They even have a free personal profile you can fill out in order to potentially find you a suitable mentor. In addition to mentors, take time to study autobiographies of great leaders that you admire. Learn everything you can from their lives and model some of their successful behaviors.

9. Be Yourself. Use your relationships with mentors and your research on great leaders as models or reference points to work from, but never copy or imitate them like a parrot. Everyone has vastly different leadership styles. History books are filled with leaders who are soft-spoken, introverted, and quiet, all the way to the other extreme of being out- spoken, extroverted, and loud, and everything in between. A quiet and simple Gandhi or a soft-spoken peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter, who became president of the United States and won a Nobel Peace Prize, have been just as effective world leaders as a loud and flamboyant Churchill, or the tough leadership style employed by The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. I admire Hemingway as a writer. But if I copy Hemingway, I'd be a second or third rate Hemingway, at best, instead of a first rate Sharif. Be yourself, your best self, always competing against yourself and bettering yourself, and you will become a first rate YOU instead of a second rate somebody else.

10. Give. Finally, be a giver. Leaders are givers. By giving, you activate a universal law as sound as gravity life gives to the giver, and takes from the taker. The more you give, the more you get. If you want more love, respect, support, and compassion, give love, give respect, give support, and give compassion. Be a mentor to others. Give back to your community. As a leader, the only way to get what you want, is by helping enough people get what they want first. As Sir Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Sharif Khan (http://www.herosoul.com; sharif@herosoul.com) is a freelance writer, motivational speaker, coach, and author of "Psychology of the Hero Soul," an inspirational book on awakening the hero within and developing people�s leadership potential. To contact Sharif directly, call: (416) 417-1259.

Leadership by Persuasion � Four Steps to Success By Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.

As a leader, your success depends upon your ability to get things done: up, down and across all lines. To survive and succeed, you must learn four essential skills of persuading people. You must convince others to take action on your behalf even when you have no formal authority.

Persuasion is an essential proficiency for all leaders, requiring you to move people toward a position they don�t currently hold. You must not only make a rational argument, but also frame your ideas, approaches and solutions in ways that appeal to diverse groups of people with basic human emotions.

Preparing the Way

Any direct attempt to persuade may provoke colleagues to oppose and polarize. Because persuasion is a learning and negotiating process, it must include three phases: discovery, preparation and dialogue.

Before you even begin to speak, consider your position from every angle. Presenting your ideas takes planning to learn about your audience and prepare your arguments.

Dialogue occurs both before and during the persuasion process. You must invite people to discuss solutions, debate the merits of your position, offer honest feedback and suggest alternatives. You must test and revise ideas to reflect colleagues� concerns and needs. Success depends on being open-minded and willing to incorporate compromises.

Four Steps to Successful Persuasion

Leading through persuasion requires you to follow four essential steps:

1. Establish credibility. Credibility develops from two sources: expertise and relationships. Listen carefully to other people�s suggestions. Establish an environment in which they know their opinions are valued. Prepare by collecting data and information that both support and contradict your arguments.

2. Understand your audience. Frame your goals in a way that identifies common ground. Your primary goal is to identify tangible benefits to which your targeted audience can relate. This requires conversations to collect essential information by asking thoughtful questions. This process will often prompt you to alter your initial argument or include compromises. Identify key decision makers, stakeholders and the organization�s network of influence. Pinpoint their interests and how they view alternatives.

3. Reinforce your positions with vivid language and compelling evidence. Persuasion requires you to present evidence: strong data in multiple forms (stories, graphs, images, metaphors and examples). Make your position come alive by using vivid language that complements graphics. In most cases, a rock-solid argument:

- Is logical and consistent with facts and experience
- Favorably addresses your audience�s interests
- Eliminates or neutralizes competing alternatives
- Recognizes and deals with office politics
- Receives endorsements from objective, authoritative third parties

4. Connect Emotionally. Your connection to your audience must demonstrate both intellectual and emotional commitment to your position. Successful persuaders cultivate an accurate sense of their audience�s emotional state, and they adjust their arguments� tone accordingly. Whatever your position, you must match your emotional fervor to your audience�s ability to receive your message.

In today�s organizations, work is generally completed by cross-functional teams of peers, with a mix of baby boomers and Gen-Xers who show little tolerance for authority. Electronic communication and globalization have further eroded the traditional hierarchy. People who perform work don�t just ask �what should I do?� but �why should I do it?�

Leaders must answer the �why� question effectively. Persuasion is an essential proficiency for all leaders who want to succeed in the 21st century organization.

Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. writes articles for business and executive coaches and consultants. She provides articles on leadership and executive development for sale, and formatted into customized newsletters. Get Patsi's Secrets of Successful Ezines 7-Step Mini-Course to learn what you need to know to publish a successful ezine. http://snipurl.com/Ezine_MiniCourse

Five Signs of a Great Leader by Michael Lee

When we think of successful leaders, we often think of people like Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, people who have made a difference in the lives of millions.

Whether it's a leadership of millions, thousands, hundreds, or just a few dozen, there are certain attributes of a leader that shine through. Though some may assume that great leaders are born and not made, we know that's not true. With the right motives, training, hard work and persistence you too can be a great leader. It doesn't matter if your desire is to be the leader of a large company, a new church or your own little family the attributes are the same.

1. Desire:
First and foremost is your desire to lead. Leadership takes a great deal of work, so what motivates you? The prime motivator is usually passion. Passion to be the best company, the fastest growing company; the church helping more people than any other, a force in the community, or the happiest, most grounded family unit. Passion to be the biggest, the best is a powerful motivator. Ask yourself what you most want to achieve in your life and the life of others. Then guide your group to creating even more motivation. Keep in mind the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "Nothing great is ever achieved without passion."

2. Vision:
It can be a vision of what you want your company to achieve, what difference you want to make in your community or the vision you have for your children and their future. Write down your vision, flesh it out and know precisely what that vision entails. Know how you'll get from Point A to Point B. You can't make a plan without a detailed vision of what you hope to achieve.

3. Creativity:
This is where your plan starts. You have the vision of what you want to achieve, now you set it out step by step. You know where you want to end up, but you need the road map to get there, the plan to get you and your workers, family or parishioners to the ultimate goal. This is where you ask your people the challenging questions and get them running with the ideas you've generated and inspire them to be creative as well. John Quincy Adams said, "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

4. Expertise:
Naturally, the more expert you are concerning your company, or community or family, the better. You must hone your information gathering abilities. Knowledge is power. It's also essential that your people recognize and respect your expertise and trust your abilities to lead them. Let your group see you as the expert, and know they can trust you to guide them to success.

5. Respect:
Respect for others is an essential attribute in a great leader. You should compliment others when they show progress. Always praise in public and condemn in private. This shows respect for your workers, family and parishioners as fellow human beings. As the leader of any group, it's your responsibility to help them sort out their conflicts. Remember, their problems are your problems. Acknowledge their strengths and their weaknesses. On the positive side, you should also help them celebrate their achievements and accomplishments. And you should listen to their ideas and suggestions, and then let them help you implement them. This will fire up their motivation in doing the required tasks.

Remember, "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be." Rosalynn Carter.

About the Author:
Michael Lee is the author of "How to be a Red Hot Persuasion Wizard... in 20 days or less", an ebook that reveals mind-altering persuasion techniques on how to tremendously enhance your relationships, create unlimited wealth, and get anything you want...just like magic. Get a sample chapter and highly-stimulating "Get What You Want" advice at: http://www.20daypersuasion.com. He is the Co-Founder of http://www.self-improvement-millionaires.com and is licensed as a Certified Public Accountant.

LEADERSHIP AND RISK TAKING by Mike Idziaszczyk

Most of us could bring to mind someone we think of as a good leader and we could even describe certain characteristics they exhibit, such as being charismatic, inspiring, driven, etc. But are these characteristics enough on their own and do they make a leader successful? Life generally requires us to take a certain amount of risk, for some people more so than others. In certain businesses risk taking may be seen as more desirable than in others. But what makes one leader take a calculated risk when nine out of ten others would walk away? And how do we know which leaders will take the right risks (the ones which pay off) and who will take the wrong ones?

Risk taking can be defined as…

"Undertaking a task involving a challenge for achievement or a desirable goal in which there is a lack of certainty or a fear of failure."

Having the capability to take risks effectively could be the key to success for many leaders. A review of the literature suggests that factors involved in this include background, willingness to take risks, seeing risks as opportunities, personality characteristics, emotional intelligence and industry specific factors.

Interestingly there is a lack of research into risk taking amongst leaders. The literature, instead, focuses more heavily on entrepreneurs. This may partly be explained by the nature of each of these roles; an entrepreneur being characterised as someone who takes risks to set up a business as opposed to a leader who guides and inspires others. These roles do also have similarities though. Leaders may at times need to take risks to achieve company goals and entrepreneurs may need to guide and inspire others.

Research into the backgrounds of entrepreneurs suggests that they see themselves as more resilient, usually due to significant events experienced during childhood and challenges during their career. This resilience comes in handy for leaders when overcoming setbacks in their career. We tend to think of entrepreneurs as always successful and yet many of them have faced setbacks and even bankruptcy. Having the resilience to overcome this and start again enables them to become successful later.

But is effective risk taking just explained by resilience and how amenable someone is to taking risks? It appears that entrepreneurs, particularly those focused on the growth of their company, and chief executives who have built their own business rather than running a family company, are more likely to take risks. Past successes and failures in risk taking also have a part to play but all of this is not sufficient to explain risk taking behaviour on its own.

Entrepreneurs tend to assess risk in different ways to others. They tend to see opportunities rather than risks because they are overconfident and generalise from past experiences and other information. They may also engage in different thinking styles (e.g. creating numerous options to solve problems), which enables them to spot more opportunities.

Another factor to consider is the personality of leaders. The ability to adapt to new situations and sustain good relationships is key to the success of leaders. Other characteristics of effective leaders are extraversion, drive for results, ambition, competitiveness, independence, optimism and high levels of emotional intelligence.

Overconfidence is often an attribute associated with leaders and something which often helps them to get to the top. However, it may also play a large part in their derailment if they are unable to adapt appropriately.

A lack of self-awareness, reduced emotional intelligence and inability or unwillingness to adapt are some reasons why leaders may have derailed whilst possessing the same qualities as they had on their way up. However, more research is needed to help us to understand more about how or when leaders start to derail.

It is useful for us to understand the personality characteristics associated with effective leaders and how amenable someone is to taking risks, but we must also remember the needs of the organisation in question. In order for this information to be useful to companies who either want to select an effective leader or develop existing leaders they need to also understand the organisational context. Risk taking behaviour is more desirable in some companies than others.

Industry specific factors are likely to influence leaders' and entrepreneurs' approach to risk taking, what they consider to be most important when deciding to take a risk or not, their willingness to take risks and the type of risks they take. For example, in the banking industry they tend to be more risk averse, take a more structured approach and be primarily concerned with exerting control over all factors within the risk to avert potential losses. Whereas in the oil industry the primary decision making criterion is expected value, implying a balance of risk and return. In the software industry their primary concern is about the impact of taking a risky decision on their business, whether this is positive or negative.

Further investigation is needed into what different industries consider to be the most important factors in deciding to take a risk and comparisons between industries. It may not be just the type of industry but how well the industry is performing. Organisations in low performing industries are likely to take more risks, possibly in an attempt to increase their profitability. This research would be useful to further understanding of the different conditions under which effective risk taking occurs in different industries.

For organisations, knowing what conditions lead to effective risk taking would enable them to select the most successful leaders and shape an environment conducive to making themselves extremely profitable. Some key conditions that are related to successful leaders and entrepreneurs are:

•Resilience and tenacity

•Risk seeking behaviour

•Assessing risks as opportunities rather than risks

•Personality characteristics

•High levels of emotional intelligence.

However, a set of conditions is too simplistic. The way these factors interact is as yet not entirely clear. Furthermore, industry specific considerations have a role to play and the most desirable individual characteristics are likely to vary somewhat depending on the industry.

It appears that we know more about what does not work rather than the exact conditions for what does work. With that in mind, there are implications for how organisations can minimise the likelihood of poor risk taking behaviour.

Individual assessment (for senior roles)

In terms of individual assessment, the individual differences (e.g. personality and willingness to take risks) associated with effective risk taking can help to inform part of the selection process. Understanding these differences can help organisations to make more effective selection decisions for successful leaders.

Coaching

The emergence of derailment characteristics amongst leaders can be a worrying signal to organisations. Derailment characteristics can be closely linked to characteristics exhibited by leaders as they made their way to the top. Therefore providing coaching for individuals at the right time is key to helping them to develop adaptive behaviours and halting derailment characteristics before they have a negative effect.

It has been suggested that derailment characteristics can be reversed with sufficient time and development. Coaching provides an excellent forum for increasing awareness of adaptation to new situations and ineffective behaviours. This can help leaders to realise the benefits of better adaptation and work on behaviours more effective in building and sustaining relationships.

Leadership development

Leadership development techniques can be used to enable individuals and organisations to understand the different requirements that are made of today's leaders. Increasing awareness of effective individual characteristics (e.g. resilience, willingness to take risks, results drive, motivation, action-orientation and risk assessment techniques) as well as industry specific considerations and requirements. Leadership development then requires individuals to live out these requirements in their day-to-day business environment in order to develop their skills.

Talent management

Applying an understanding of what makes leaders effective risk takers and the associated conditions enables organisations to develop their talent management strategy in terms of what potential looks like and how to measure it. Understanding what motivates these leaders will also help organisations to retain the leaders with the greatest potential. Furthermore, the ability to recognise an effective risk taker at an early stage in their career will enable organisations to encourage and develop these individuals into effective leaders for their organisation. Developing talent from within reduces the likelihood of having to recruit leaders externally and is therefore likely to save the organisation money in the long term.

Mike Idziaszczyk Psychologist http://www.pearnkandola.com

About the Author

Mike Idziaszczyk is a Psychologist at Pearn Kandola Business Psychologists based in Oxford. He can be contacted on + 44 1865 516202 or emailed at midziaszczyk@pearnkandola.com http://www.pearnkandola.com

How To Delegate - One Key Step Towards Leadership by: Paul Lemberg

Delegation -- one of the critical determining factors for everyone who wants to be an effective leader or manager. And for those of us control freaks, lack of delegating skill can be a real show stopper.

Because the harder you try to hold on to things, the faster they can get away from you, and if you want to extend your reach beyond your ability to do everything at once, you must delegate some things to other people.

In my business coaching practice, and in our franchise for business coaches we find that delegation is simply frightening for many people.

Why?

First of all, you may enjoy doing the thing you have to delegate...

You may think you do it better than anyone else. You imagine it won't get done properly...

And you know it won't get done your way. You might even believe if you don't do that thing, you won't have enough to do.

Know this: whatever you keep to yourself instead of delegating will get shorter shrift than it deserves. These things become bottlenecks in the continued success of your business .

There are four keys to effective delegating.

1. Give the job to someone who can get it done - someone who either has, or has access to, the skills, knowledge and resources needed. Also, give the job to someone who has time for it. Don't dump your projects onto someone who has neither the wherewithal nor the availability.

If you do that you are simply setting them up to fail and setting yourself up for disappointment. Don't just hand your task to the next warm body. Get buy-in from the delegate. Are they okay with this thing? Are they enrolled, or is this just more work for someone who is already overburdened?

2. Communicate your conditions of satisfaction. Have you ever asked someone to do something, and when they came back you said, "Oh. That's not what I wanted at all"? Be sure you have mutual agreement on the critical requirements that define how this job must be handled, and what the outcome will look like.

Use SMART goals to clarify the desired outcome along with a timeline for its realization. Also, if necessary, set up a measurement system that will help you and your delegate know whether things are on or off track.

3. Work out a plan. Depending on the complexity of the delegated task, you may ask that the first step be a plan for how to get the rest done. In other cases, the request may be simple and a plan not necessary. But think this through.

If you are uncertain as to how something needs to get done, but want to make sure it will occur according to some guidelines - get a plan.

4. Finally, you need a communications protocol - how are you going to get updates and give feedback or advice? When are you going to speak or meet? How frequently? Will they send you an email, or a formal progress report? Create some pre-defined mechanism to keep you informed, and to give them an opportunity to seek guidance if appropriate.

There is a big difference between delegating and abdicating. When you abdicate you are saying - I'm neither responsible nor accountable for the results. When you delegate, you are still accountable. You are asking your delegate to do the work, and therefore be accountable to you.

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." - General George S. Patton

About The Author

Paul Lemberg is the president of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world's only fully systemized business coaching program guaranteed to help entrepreneurs rapidly create More Profits and More Life(tm). To get your copy of our free special report with detailed steps on how to grow your business at least 40% faster, even when you aren’t sure what to do next, go to www.fastergrowthnow.com.

paul@lemberg.com

8 Steps to Effective Christian Leadership by: Sean Mize

As a Christian leader, you are held to high moral, ethical, and social standards. As a leader, you are held to high standards, but as a Christian leader, that bar is raised even higher. Why? Because both the Christian and non-Christian social environment has tended to expect that Christians measure up to their self-proclaimed moral and ethical standards, as they rightly should. What can you do to be sure you ‘stand up to the test’ in the area of Christian leadership?

1) Probably the most important thing you can do as a Christian leader is to clean up your act---if there is anything in your life, moral or ethical, which would not stand up to scrutiny if the entire world found out---you must eliminate it immediately. Do not give anyone an occasion to think that you are a hypocrite.

2) Be sure that every decision you make is honest and ethical. You cannot effectively lead, as a Christian or not, when your decisions and actions are not above-board, fair, and honest.

3) As a Christian leader, commit to telling the truth no matter what. As a Christian leader, when you lie or tell half-truths, people tend to feel that your entire faith is a sham. In fact, if you are habitually lying and telling half-truths, your faith may indeed be a sham.

4) Learn everything you can about the tasks at hand, even if it means working in the trenches for awhile. No one likes to be led by someone who has never done what they are doing. This doesn’t mean you have to become an expert, just participate in the menial work long enough to understand the frustrating aspects of the work. Another benefit to this is, when you have actually done the work, you can more effectively brainstorm solutions to challenges when they arise.

5) Lead by example. Do you expect your employees or secretaries to arrive on time for work, and dressed well? Then you must do the same. Sometimes it is so easy to think that you have earned the right to come in whenever you feel like it, or to return from lunch whenever you wish. Sure, you may have earned the right, but you gain far more by setting the example for performance. Do you expect others to work overtime when a project is behind projections? Then you must be willing to do the same.

6) Although you may feel you have earned the right to delegate away all the work, continue to be involved in productive tasks. By doing some of the work, not only do you gain the respect of your employees, but also you keep in touch with the flow of things. As a leader, it is easy to become disengaged from the actual productive segment of your business, and resultantly make decisions that look good on paper and sound good around the boardroom table, but are actually worthless when the rubber hits the road.

7) Constantly reevaluate your own performance. Often, you may spend so much time correcting the actions of others and solving crises you didn’t create, that you develop a sense that others aren’t as capable as you. Consequently, you may not recognize when you are falling into bad habits that also need to be corrected. Be the first to recognize and correct your own short-fallings.

8) Avoid pride. Once in a position of leadership, especially if you are good at what you do, it is easy to begin to feel that you are invincible. Once that occurs, you become vulnerable to pride, and may make decisions you would frown on if your subordinates made the same decisions. Maintain full responsibility for your actions, and keep them above-board at all times.

Bonus Step:

9) Learn to manage your time. When you are in a position of leadership and find yourself delegating away most of the time-consuming tasks, it is easy to lose control of your time. Again, when your employees see you wasting your time, they will tend to do the same.

About The Author

Written by: Sean Mize, Christian entrepreneur and Christian time management author.
http://www.christiansuccessnetwork.com

Note: You have my permission to reprint and distribute this article as long as it is distributed in its entirety, including all links. © Sean Mize 2006

To subscribe to a free weekly newsletter with more Christian success tips like these, click here: http://www.christiansuccessnetwork.com/newsletter1.htm

Leadership Lessons from the US Marines by: Wally Bock

I was sixteen years old when I decided that if I went to college right after high school, I'd probably party too much and study too little. My plan was: go into the armed forces; grow up a little; and make some money for college.

That's how I found myself standing in the Marine Corps Recruiting Office. It wasn't much, just a tiny space, not nearly as fancy as the offices of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The entire space was almost filled by a man with razor-sharp creases in his shirt and the shortest haircut I'd ever seen.

He was looking down at his desk and writing on a form when I came in. I described in detail the educational, job training and assignment offers all the other services had made. Then I asked, "What will the Marine Corps offer me?"

The Marine looked up for a second, his expression serious. "Four years of hell. A haircut every week. And a rifle." I chose the Marines.

I chose the Marines because it was a challenge. Most people like to be challenged. Give them something that stretches them and they'll rise to the occasion. Treat them like they're lazy and incompetent and that's what you'll get.

The US Marine Corps is the world's largest elite fighting force. Marines do great things. But the Marine Corps isn't great because it chooses the top candidates. The Marines pick from the same pool as the other services. Instead, Marines do great things because they're Marines and great things are expected of them.

Challenge your people and they'll do great things. That's the first of many lessons I learned in the Marines. Here are some others.

I learned that people emulate their leaders. Sometimes that happens in funny ways.

When I was in language school, one of my classmates was a Gunnery Sergeant (we called him "Gunny") who had been a Drill Instructor. He'd also been in the Korean War and a wound from that time caused him to walk with an odd gait where he swung his right leg out in a half circle with every step.

One night Gunny invited us over to his quarters for beer and home movies. They included movies of graduation ceremonies for the platoons that he'd trained.

There on the screen we saw them, marching in perfect unison. That was like every graduating platoon. But everybody he'd trained walked just like the Gunny did, ninety of them at a time swinging their right legs in a half circle.

If you're a leader, your people will watch what you do. And they'll follow your example. You do great work and so will they. You cut corners and so will they. Part of your job is to set a good example, one that you want your people to follow.

A good example is important, but it isn't enough. You also have to tell people what you want. The way one older sergeant put it to me: "You either tell them, or they'll guess and you just might get a bad surprise." So part of your job is learning to give clear directions, but not too many of them.

The Marines are famous for the "mission order." A mission order is defined as "an order to a unit to perform a mission without specifying how it is to be accomplished." Let them decide how to do it.

Of course that only works if you've got engaged people who know how to accomplish the mission. So another part of your job as a leader is to develop your people.

When I was preparing for my first promotion board I learned that Marine leaders are expected to do two jobs. They are expected to accomplish the mission. And they are expected to care for their people.

Caring for your people means keeping them safe. It means making sure they have the resources they need to do their jobs. And it means helping them develop to become the best they can be.

You do some of that with formal training, but you do most if it with day to day contact, counsel, correction and encouragement. You do some of that with positive consequences that encourage people to continue good practices and try new things. And you do some with negative consequences that encourage people to abandon behavior you don't want.

The leadership lessons I learned in the Marines have worked for me for over forty years now. They've worked for the Corps for over two hundred years. And they can work for you.

About The Author

Wally Bock is an author, speaker, consultant and coach who helps leaders improve the performance and morale of their teams. This material is adapted from Wally's latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership http://www.performancetalk.com). You'll also find tips and resources about all aspects of leadership at the Three Star Leadership site (http://www.threestarleadership.com/).