Sunday, February 13, 2011

Five Ways to Sabotage Your Rise to Leadership




By Barbara LaBier

Leaders in public, private, and nonprofit sectors  fail to become exceptional leaders because they overemphasize personal goals at the expense of others according to researchers.

Barriers to success include:

Failure to Commit

As a manger you may be protecting yourself instead of supporting members of the team and making customers happy. Emerging leaders are advised to minimize scanning the horizon for predators and pay attention to others or an entire team. At this point in your career, capture the skills and resources that you’re missing to accomplish your goals.

Protection of Your Public Image

Many ambitious people choose between image and impact. Sometimes they are so busy creating a persona of the leader they would like to be that they fail to act as one. The best strategy is to help others achieve their goals and forget about appearing as a perfect leader in every situation.


Turning Competitors into Enemies

Turning negative relationships into toxic behavior carries significant leadership costs.

Distorting responses from other people you don’t like limits your view of reality and prevents valuable chances to collaborate. The better alternative is to listen to the other side of the story and turn revaluation into collaboration.

Going It Alone

People opt-out of leadership roles because the road is unsafe. Learning how to cope with your own fears is necessary and can be mitigated by relying on the advice of your “team” comprised of family, friends or mentors that help provide perspective, grounding and faith. Find others who believe in your desire and ability to lead and cherish them.


Waiting for Permission

While patience is the main ingredient in discipline and hope, it can also be a curse for emerging leaders. Potential can be undermined because we can be persuaded to continue to wait for someone to recognize our achievements and give us more authority. Generally influence leads to power so we are advised not to wait for the powers that be to anoint us but to take the chance to initiate change.

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The information for this article was excerpted from Harvard Business Review January-February 2011





Monday, February 7, 2011

Why Feeling Bad for Some Leaders is Actually Good

Feeling Guilty is Good for Leaders
http://www.resumecrafters.com/


By Barbara LaBier

Guilt-ridden people make great leaders according to new study from data gathered through Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. A link between performance and guilt showed that people who were guiltier than others received higher performance rating from their bosses and were perceived as stronger leaders by peers.

Director of the Center of Leadership Development Francis J. Flynn, gave 150 workers in the finance department of a Fortune 500 firm a psychological test which measured guilt and compared the results with their performance reviews.

One surprising finding was that these bosses with high levels of guilt felt guilty when they accepted layoffs and carried them out to be good soldiers and believed in the organization.

Guilt can be good the author concludes because guilty and more neurotic people are more altruistic and willing to help others. That is not to say, however, that organizations should create guilt in employees to improve performance. More research is needed to access the effects of guilt on a leader and the stress it brings into their life.


Excerpted from the Harvard Business Review January-February 2011