Leadership at the Next Level Summary
Leadership refers to handling people well and treating them with respect and being fair to them in the process of attaining valuable results. For years leadership has been defined as the ability to control others and to one’s power and authority to affect the greater .leadership has been done for personal interest whereby people do it to accomplish their own goals, pays more attention to personal schedule and enrichment .this makes them forget other people interest and focus only on self-service. When leading at a higher level one consider other people interests, you fair to all involved, you respect and care for them no self-service as you realize that they are so important to the organization performance .the theme here is about proper leadership qualities whereby leaders are urged to handle the customers and employees with care and respect, self-service is highly discouraged and should never be a quality of a leader.
Chapter One: Is your Organization High Performing?
In high performing organizations, every individual energy focuses on being the best they can hence making the rich target. This differentiates ordinary organizations and the greatest organization. High performing organization does their best in the three essential lines that are being superior provider, employer of choice, and investment of choice.They should be aware of the fact that their profit originates from their customers, employees, and investors. Being superior provider means that you provide better and your competitors offer quality services than that; customers always have options of other organizations offering the same services, so to be superior, you have to do something extra to satisfy and please them. A satisfied customer is not all you need but one who is so excited about how you treat them and want to tell everyone about you and invite their friends to enjoy the same this customer becomes an important part of the sales force of the company. Employer of choice. Good pay is not enough to make an organization the employer of choice, motivating, and empowering the environment is adequate to allow them to be the best they can. Listen to them, reward them and let them feel valued as they are going to pass this positive attitudes to the customer, for example, if a leader in an organization adopts the habit of being fair with the employees they may also start to treat the clients politely by welcoming them time and again hence improving sales. Still, if you treat them poorly, they will pass it over to their customers .investment of choice .each organization requires funds through sources such as loans, grants, and hire purchases for people to invest in you. They need to have faith in the leadership, performance over time, and organizational viability.
Higher performing organization have six components that are so essential .the components acronym is SCORES. S is for Shared information and open communication, organizations decisions are readily available to people and openly communicated while everyone is there this builds trust and encourages people as they are aware of the organization issues and they have participated in decision making. C represents Compelling vision; if everyone supports the organizational vision that is its purpose, values, and future, .people are excited, energized, focused, and drives business results towards a greater good. O is for Ongoing learning; high performing organizations focus on improving their capabilities through learning systems, building knowledge capital, and transferring learning throughout the organization. R is for Relentless focus on customer results; in high performing organizations, employees do their best to offer quality services that are of higher standards from their customer’s view. E represents Energizing systems and structures; the system and structure are aligned to support organization vision. Objectives .S represent Shared power and high involvement, in the higher leading organization, every person is involved in the decision-making process in that management consults other employees while making a decision; teamwork is highly embraced; hence eve one idea and suggestion counts.
Chapter Two: The Power of a Vision
Vision is very powerful and very essential in the organization; its guides the organization on what is expected from them. The higher leading organizations have a captivating vision that creates a strong culture in that everyone’s pay attention to it. Once leaders have shared the vision, they focus on serving and being responsive to people’s needs. A great leader shares ideas with his or her direct reports and merges their suggestion, too; this leads to customer satisfaction, profitability, and a committed workforce.
Chapter Three: Serving Customers at Higher Level
Serving customers at a higher level is a step in leading at a higher level this is because customers are essential and matter a lot in an organization, it starts and ends with customer .for customers to be served in higher-level their feedback is very important, this feedback comes as a result of face to face contact with the customers, the regular ones, angry and frustrated and also those not using organizations products. The conversation enables leaders to know customers. They also share the customer feedback thought the organization with this. They can strengthen their weaknesses and enhance their strongholds hence offering quality services to the customers.
Treat your People Right
Large leading organizations treat people right as a result of understanding three elements that help them to create raving fans. These elements are Decide, Discover, and Deliver. .Decide is essential when you want to create raving fans; one has to come up with a plan about every experience that you want customers to enjoy. Discover, this is all about knowing your customer’s experience and getting suggestions from them on what to improve to make them more comfortable. Deliver in this. It’s about now giving to your customers what they expect and what keeps them excited.
Chapter 4: Empowerment is the Key
Empowerment is about giving people the freedom to utilize personal knowledge, experience, and motivation to create a healthy triple bottom line. Empowering people brings perfect results that are not possible when leaders take all the responsibility by themselves .for a company that hopes and wishes to succeed in the new knowledge-based economy, empowerment is the key. Sharing information, declaring the boundaries and replacing the old hierarchy with self-directed individuals and teams are keys to empowerment sharing information enables organizations to make proper decisions, with this everyone becomes responsible and looks for ways to bring new knowledge and the idea of doing things Declaring the boundaries aim at controlling people by keeping them in a certain place and out of other places. Still, these boundaries expand to let direct reports grow and develop. Replacing the Old Hierarchy with self-directed individuals and teams, as individuals use newly shared information, they leave dependence level to self-directed level on and on to highly skilled hence replacing the clarity and support of the hierarchy.
Chapter 5: Situational Leadership the Integrating Concept
Situational leadership is based on the fact that people don’t stay stagnant in one level of development; this is because people can and want to grow the belief that people can and want to develop. A leader should match every development level by adapting leadership style to the situation; this will encourage development. Directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating are leadership styles and go hand in hand with development levels, which are enthusiastic beginner, disillusioned learner, capable but cautious performer, and a self-reliant achiever. Enthusiastic beginner’s level needs a directing style, disillusioned learners need a coaching style, capable but cautious performers need a supporting style, and self-reliant achievers need a delegating style. Development varies from goal to goal. One can be on a development level on a certain task and be on a different level on the other task. Three skills of a situational leader are Diagnosis, Flexibility, and Partnering for performance. Diagnosis is where you assess the development level of your direct report by paying attention to competence and commitment. Flexibility is all about using different styles as an employee graduate from one level of development to the next. Partnering for performance, leadership is not always a leader serving people but also serving with people; this is facilitated by good relationships and communication between him and his employees.
Chapter 6: Self-leadership: The Power behind Empowerment
Leading organizations realize that developing self leaders is a powerful way to impact the triple bottom line positively. People need to be educated on self-leadership for them to understand what, when, and how to do everything by themselves .a self leader has these three skills: challenge assumed, celebrate your points of power and collaborate for Success. Challenge Assumed Constraints, An assumed constraints or restriction is a belief in an experience that limits current and future experiences. Celebrate Your Points this is personal power, knowledge power, position power, task power, and relationship power. Understanding these points of power is an enlightening experience. Collaborate for Success, this is all about working together to succeed, Selfleaders diagnose their development on specific goal or task and makes an effort to get the leadership style they need to succeed from their managers.
Chapter 7 Partnering for Performance
Partnership refers to mutual trust and understanding between two or more people who are working together towards a common goal. Partnership for performance occurs in a situation whereby both leader and the direct report gets a chance to influence one other; this helps them to perform better by improving the quality of services that each one of them is offering. This boosts their confidence about themselves and also strengthens the relationship between them; this is because partnership increases the quality and quantity of conversations between managers and the employee.
Chapter 8:Essential Skills for Partnering for Performance
Performance Planning, performance coaching, and performance review are three essential parts of successful performance management. Performance planning is whereby the manager and employees agree on the goals and objectives of an organization that they will focus on. They also come up with a way of doing things, assess how they help them achieve the goal… Performance Coaching. This is where leaders to aid direct reports to be successful; they do everything to see their employees succeed. They motivate them by praising any progress they make, advice, and redirects unsuitable performance. Performance Review is all about assessing employee performance, how he or she conducts duties in an organization .the manager and direct report hold a meeting that goes through his or her performance over time they discuss honestly on an ongoing basis hence creating mutual understanding and agreement.
Chapter 9: Situational Team Leadership
A team can be defined as a situation where two or more come together to work towards a common goal. Through teamwork, more complicated problems are solved and better decisions made. Teamwork creates the generation of better ideas since more people but their ideas into the tasks. It has the power to increase productivity, morale, and can accomplish quality change more easily. Teamwork helps people to identify their worth, connect, and find the value of people in an organization.
Chapter 10: Organizational Leadership
Leading an organization is challenging due to constant change in organization life. .For managers and leaders to cope with the changes and keep their organizations suitable and workable. They have to come up with strategies to listen to organization discussion and resolve people’s concerns with change. They develop a strategy that brings about individuals’ creativity and commitment to work in the organization. This is achieved by sharing information broadly within the organization, putting into consideration people’s suggestions, sponsoring pilots, and providing support.
Chapter 11: Leading Change
According to Blanchard, in this book, there are many different ways in which a leader can lead to change in an organization. The first method identifies it is through increasing the opportunities for involving the workers and influencing them. Using this method, a leader gets to understand the subjects and can influence them. The second strategy is through communicating the need for change. When the people understand the reason why change is necessary, they will work towards reinforcing the change. The third approach is by creating a clear vision. Leaders should create a clear vision of their subject. When the vision is clear, the subjects automatically change their behavior to fit in with the organization’s visions. Leaders can also enhance change effectively by experimenting with the changes before putting them into action. Many people reject change, especially if it fails to be practicable. Leaders should ensure that changes are practical so that others can easily adapt them.
Blanchard, in this book, also identifies that leaders should enable and encourage change. A leader should be able to encourage others to adopt change and support the change itself. Change can be easily adopted when there is enough support. The other approach to enhancing change is through execution and endorsing responsibilities. Leaders should create a system where people are responsible for the change. Leaders should make people take full responsibility for endorsing the change. The other strategy is to embed and extend all its efforts to the change. If a leader focuses on change for sure, that change will come to be implemented successfully. Finally, in creating change, leaders ought to look at all the possibilities. It is good for a leader to be aware of all the possible outcomes of the proposed changes. Looking at all possibilities helps leaders to be sure about their change options.
Chapter 12: Servant Leadership
Servant leadership is about giving it all to bring a positive change to make a world a better place. The servant leader’s goals are focused on the greater good .servant leaders help people to achieve their goals by finding out what their people need to be successful and offering the necessary support. They pay attention to make a difference in the lives of their people and the process they impact the organization .in summary this leader does not only focus on themselves but rather try to change and improve the lives of others by supporting them in areas need to, for example, a leader who not only pays his direct reports but also creates a good working environment for his employees, motivates and rewards them is a servant leader, the one who donates essential goods to society and improves they’re well being is also a servant leader. Servant leadership is about making the world a better place by helping others.
Chapter 13: Determining your Leadership Point of View
A successful leader is a person who brings a positive impact in an organization by attaining valuable results, caring, and respecting all people involved. A leader should be willing to teach others so that they can understand the organization’s goals, narrating to them where you came from and help them understand what you expect from everyone. The leader let the direct reports know what to expect from him. By having good leadership qualities, the leader strengthens employees thinking about leadership and shows them how to conduct themselves in case they become leaders.