21st Century Leadership. a conference by Allan Strudwick. 20110809
Leadership in business, or in life. There is good leadership and bad
10 points about leadership
Why can he talk about leadership
His father was businessman, and he tried to make him the best businessman possible. At 16, he got a business. Education, and experience. People go into business, and in 2 or 3 years, they will crash the business, because they do not really like the business.
He hired friends, and he had to fire some of them, losing some friends. He had to purchase, sell, pay, etc. His father was advisor, but many times he did not listen to him. He had to learn how to manage the money in order not to lose it. The money produced cash, and He liked to spend money in girls and cars. That was not very good. He sold the business, made a profit and purchased a car. He went to the University to study business, getting a degree, and a MBA, and other degrees. He believes in education. At first, he could not stay in college because he loved business, but was bored sitting in a classroom. He wanted to keep experiencing. He made more business, and then he went back to school. Education and a practical application of education. One without the other, just does not work. As a consultant, he can help a lot of people in communities to develop. It does not matter what your position is, you still can participate in the growing of the company. You can increase education, and in the mean time, contribute to expanding the company and the business.
This is not necessarily academic knowledge, but practical of his own. He can tell of things that do not work. He has won and lost money. He has been rich and poor. Rich is better. You can pay your obligations. When you are rich, you can influence. Influence, not manipulation. A lot of people make manipulation, but the right thing is to influence in order to make the lives of people, better.
1.- DETERMINE NOT YOUR GOALS, BUT YOUR PURPOSE. Money? If it is the only purpose, it destroys you. That makes leaders take bad decisions. You need money, it is not against the money, but our behavior should be more than that.
2.- DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEADERS AND MANAGERS:
LEADERS | MANAGERS |
Purpose, that will make you succeed. | Job |
Expand, growing, nurturing | Maintain, keep safe, control. But you should move from maintain to expand. |
They want to grow and educate themselves. Always learning and learning. Keep up to date | Keep the status quo, normality |
Empower people around them, to be better than themselves. A leader will never fear that his followers are better than him. | Control people around them, because they have fear of losing the job to someone better |
Not common, anywhere. When you are, you can come out of the crowd. | |
Proactive, thinking of the future problems, issues, etc. and anticipate them to be solved | Reactive, stress and pressure, you can not think strategies, ahead. |
Results oriented | Stability |
Change is the only thing that will keep on happening.
Motivated | Fear |
Passionately driven: “We can do that” | Caution driven. “What if it does not work?” |
Can have mistakes. | The risk analysis is importante |
Excellence seeker | Perfection seeker. Nobody is perfect. |
Try new things, and make mistakes, but they come back to get success and opportunities | Static |
They like change | They do not |
They manage and produce change | They do not |
Leaders have the traits listed here, disregarding their time |
The quicker you become proactive, the quicker you will been promoted | |
You have a choice, if you do not like your current position: you can change your attitude, and that will lead to a better position or another job. Become more proactive | |
Companies like and seek business | |
Use their environment for their benefit. When you live in an American environment you get the American accent. | Conform to their environment |
How to build excellence:
2 ways to do it. Focus on these 2 things. The costumer, and the service.
· Costumers are external and Internal. You always have costumers.
· Service, in the 21st century, it all is about serving others. How do I help the costumer. How do I help others to develop themselves. Serve ionternal and external costumers.
· Many times, and everywhere, service is very poor. When you increase the service you do to your costumer, you will become successful, and if you do better than your competitors, you will have better success than them.
· You are in the business of serving, if you are a leader. That is your job. You need to find someone that is very rude. That is the best place to learn. I will go to my rudest costumer, in order to learn. He will complain about me, swear about me, etc. I practice these things:
o practice smiling, it works.
o Keep your mouth shut for a while. It works, too.
o Think
o Ask a question. Do not tell, ask questions. That will bring you success. When I ask a question, I show my interest in helping them, not in defending myself. Do not give a solution, Ask “will this be a solution for you?”
o Go the extra mile. What can I do extra for this person?
· You need to add value to the lives of others. Then, that person will talk positively about you.
· When he tried this method, the costumer kept being rude. So, he did not surrender, he kept practicing. Do not give up. Keep practicing, until the costumer changes. He got the confidence of the costumer.
MAKE LEADERS AROUND YOU GROW AND DEVELOP.
· Equip them to be better than you.
· Empower them. Make them make decisions. Do not only give orders to do stuff. Do not be rude if he makes a mistake. Tell him: let us do this together. Equip and empower them.
· Release them. “you are better than I. I can recommend you to be promoted”. Maybe, the disciple will earno more money than the teacher, but that should make the teacher happy.
· The only way to develop a country and the businesses, is that you make it develop. You are the business world. You are the change. You can do it if you chose to do it.
· Change the culture. Find the key people who want to make the change. 2 or 3 are enough. Make the change with them. In months, these people encourage other people to change.
You can change the business thing in Guatemala.
Some tips:
VALUES AND ETHICS.
· In tegrity, greatest than honesty. Do the right thing, regardless of people seeing it.
· You can not expect your boss to have integrity, yo need to have integrity yourself now.
· Do not compromise. Do not change.
· You need to get stronger, because things will try to influence you.
· Add value to everything
· Make a difference. In every relationship, how can I make it different? Every time they see me, they need to see a difference in me.
· True leaders care about others, instead of caring about themselves.
· For example, some manuals include lying to the costumers in order to sell, that is not integrity. That is not acceptable. Do not compromise. Respect your own values. Make yourself notorious because of your values.
VISION:
Strong vision, not weak. You need a strong vision for your purpose and your career, and your reasons. It goes beyond you. It has to stretch you. Stretch in other markets, or into other visions. At work, you need a vision of what you want from your life. Not next year, but in 10 years. It needs to be strong.
COMMUNICATE YOUR VISION:
DISPLAY YOUR VISION: Distribute it, write it down, show it to others. Keep things that remind your vision, to keep you motivated.
If you do not have a vision, get one. If you do not have one, you will end up your life, in a different point of what you should be in.
COMMUNICATION is the greatest complaint of people everywhere. The bosses do not communicate, people find it difficult to communicate with costumers. Internally, there is bad communication. Over and over, it is the greatest complaint every where.
To be a good leader in the future, you need to be a good communicator. You need to be a better communicator, Educate yourserlf, learn, how to communicate better. ASK more than you tell. When you ask questions, people communicate more, and you will get feedback. We need to keep up with technology, in order to communicate effectively.
Effective communication, not just technology.
Visual, oratory, hearing, kinesthetic. Ver, oír, sentir. We need these 3 ways of communicating. When we move to email, how can I put these 3 things into communications? If I do not do, I cut the effective communication.
If you can communicate face to face, it will be more effective.
For effective emails, we can ASK QUESTIONS, CLARIFY. But as good leaders, we need to go further: IDENTIFY, UNDERSTAND THE REASON. Not just the what, the how and the why.
THESE PRINCIPLES, ARE SIMPLE BUT NOT EASY. AND YOU NEED TGO PUT THEM TO PRACTICE, IF NOT THEY ARE NOT USEFUL. Like when you learn a sport. Practice, practice, practice. People use to get bored when they practice a sport, or think that they are not
