Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Communicate Clearly


As a leader, you enjoy the keen satisfaction of knowing you help others to achieve their goals while you reach your own goals. Effective communication binds all the individuals of this complex business relationships together and enables you, both as individuals and as a team, to achieve organizational goals. Several constructive attitudes form the foundation for successful communication:

Good relationships. Getting along well with people is essential to effective leadership. Constructive communication – written or verbal – takes into account the principles of good human relationships. Respect and consideration for others, for example, are paramount to good human relationships. “Treat others as you would have them treat you” is a reliable guideline at all levels of human interaction. If you want others to listen to you, for example, you must listen to them. If you want to be treated courteously, you must exhibit courtesy.

Mutual understanding. Achieving results through communication and persuasion requires mutual understanding. Understanding, in turn, requires a genuine effort to see things from the point of view of others. This empathetic effort earns the confidence of other people, paves the way for acceptance of your message, and increases the likelihood of a positive response.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

4 Lessons Learned from Putting Leadership Development at the Heart of a Major Operations-Improvement Effort

1.  Leadership and Management Development Training must be tied to the business strategy of the organization.

2.  Leadership Training must build on the behavioral strengths needed for the overall transformation while focusing on the existing interpersonal strengths and managerial optimism of your management team to help them broadly engage the employees in the organization.

3.  Provide the training participants access to senior level executives so they can tell them the hard truths or the “why’s” for the change.

4.  Create a network or forum for communicating ideas, best practices, and even pitfalls to avoid among managers.  Managers need to know that they are not alone in this transformation.

Putting leadership development at the heart of a major operations-improvement effort paid big dividends for a global industrial company.(Free Report Below) Far too often, leaders ask everyone else to change but fail to do so themselves. In reality,  this philosophy doesn’t work until they first change themselves.