What is your natural leadership style? You can quickly assess your dominant leadership style by examining the leadership characteristics contained in the Leadership Style Quick Diagnostic.
Leadership Style Quick Diagnostic
Q:Can someone be a good leader and a poor manager or vice versa ?
Yes it is entirely possible. This is because the skills required for management are very different from the skills needed to lead. Management skills (more…)
Q:Are people born leaders or can we learn to become a leader ?
Anyone can become a leader that is willing and able to strive for and achieve goals. As long as you have the competence to do the job, have clarity of strategic purpose, understand the operating environment, and are true to yourself, you can learn to become a great leader of others. (more…)
Q:Why do we see some great leaders suddenly become mediocre?
Although there could be many reasons for this, a change in strategic context can be a major reason. If you look at some of the world’s greatest leaders, you can see evidence of this. Winston Churchill was a great wartime leader but was unable to lead effectively after the war – in times of (more…)
Q: Great leaders don’t follow, do they ?
A: One of the character traits of a great leader is humility. Being human, means that we don’t have all the answers. Leaders at some stage must also be a follower. A leader generally follows another leader that is more senior and has a bigger perspective. A good leader will also know when it is (more…)
Q: What leadership style is most effective or preferred ?
There is no such thing as ‘the most effective’ or preferred leadership style. A particular leadership style is neither good nor bad. It is either relevant and shapes an appropriate culture that enables the organisation to add value, or it is not relevant and therefore shapes an inappropri (more…)
Leadership and Self-Deception
If you are on a personal journey of self-discovery and improvement, this is a 5 star MUST read book for you.
This book will generate profound insights and learnings that can have a sustainable and transformational impact on your life and on all of your relationships.
It is an easy read. Written as a novel, you will find it difficult to put down. Because anyone reading this book can see themselves in the characters, the content will touch and influence you at both a conscious and subconscious level.
In essence, you discover that:
- The only person you can control is yourself
- When you take responsibility for your life you choose whether to react or respond to any thing that happens to you
- If you choose to respond, you are “out of the box” and retain you power because you see others as people with thoughts and feelings. This is a state in which you can grow and be happy.
- If you choose to react to circumstances that occur, you give your power away. You see others as objects to blame. You are “in the box”
- When you are “in the box” you live life in a sub-optimal way. You are in a state of self-deception that “blinds you to the true cause of the problems”
- When “blinded” any solution you conceive only accentuates the problem
- You rationalise your behaviour; blame others to justify your behaviour to yourself. This self justification deceives you. Your “truth” does not reflect the reality.
- If this pattern continues, it becomes part of your being – who you are as a person. It unconsciously becomes part of your character.
- In Part III of the book, the authors provide solutions on “How we get out of the Box”.
Having read the book a while ago, I still have a raised level of conscious awareness of how I am thinking, feeling and acting towards others. Because of this it has had a profound positive impact on how I live my live and has made me a better person for having read this book.
A South African Meat Company
Context
A German immigrant to South Africa established a butcher shop on the South Coast of Natal in the early 1940s. When he died in the early 1980s, his youngest son, then 18 was asked to take over the running of the family business as he had the most knowledge and was the most passionate about the business. (more…)