Quick! I Need to Be a Leader in 30 Days!

CHAPTER ONE

WEEK 1:

LEADING

YOURSELF

Are you ready to become a leader in 30 days? Where do we start? We start with you of course: the reader—the individual. Understanding how you see the world is a critical first step along the path to becoming an effective leader. How do you see your organization and the people who work within it? And how do you picture yourself fitting in as a new leader? It’s entirely possible you’ve been promoted to this new position because of technical prowess demonstrated in the past. There’s nothing wrong with that! It’s a common road to the top of any organization.

In most companies, traditional technical knowledge describes expertise in whatever the business happens to be engaged (engineering, education, nursing, legal, law enforcement, welding.) However, the technical knowledge that leadership mastery requires means something different.

Researchers and authors James Kouzes and Barry Posner found traditional technical knowledge of leaders often fades away over time and unfortunately becomes the justification for micromanagers. How does this happen?

Over time technical capabilities decrease. Effective leadership is time-consuming. The incredible amount of effort spent on leadership and management tasks simply prevents leaders from remaining at the cutting edge of the technical skill sets they once possessed. Yet such leaders, equipped with ebbing skill sets, begin to search for something to do, and that often means looking over the shoulder of those followers doing the technical work in which they were once so skilled. Comments, suggestions and alternative technical approaches emanating from such micromanaging leaders drive followers and employees crazy and can ruin organizational morale.

Have you ever dealt with a micromanager? Often you either learn to avoid them or you end up submitting everything to them for their blessing or approval. A workforce that continually waits for micromanager approval of each and every task is usually demoralized and regularly missing deadlines. Micromanaging is not the way an effective leader operates.

Avoiding the pitfalls of micromanagement requires an understanding and an exploration of personal skills, abilities, and attitudes toward one’s new leadership position. So, how is it decided what new leaders should work on in order to avoid the pitfalls of micromanagement?

PERSONAL SKILL CHALLENGES

Read through these two lists of activities and decide which ones: 1) You are doing OK with; 2) You should do more of; 3) You should do less of; and, 4) You need to start doing. You also can add your own skills or behaviors to the list. When you finish, identify 3-5 skills you would like to focus on over the next month. Your Strategic Leadership Advisor, coach or mentor should review your progress at the end of each course week.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES