Effective Leadership Requires A Team
Stimulating success with knowledge
Stimulating success with knowledge
The old adage, “many hands make light work” remains true. While we may all have knowledge and skills in multiple fields we can only be real experts within a core area of specialization. Hence, to be effective in performing well in your area of specialization you need a team. Equally important is leadership skill to organize and get the best performance from your team.
No matter how talented you are it remains critical that you attract the right people into your team who complement your skills. Once assembled the team needs a leader who acts as the “first amongst equals” which in Sanskrit is called the “Pradhan Mantri” or in the English cabinet system of governance the Prime Minister who leads a team of Ministers.
Mantri in Sanskrit means Sage a person who understands knowledge or the mantra. The world mantri traveled via South East Asia to China where it evolved into the word Mandarin describing the system of administrators selected through a public examination system. Therefore, to be a good leader you must first assemble a team of individuals who are qualified and competent. This is a universal principal that has been well established over the centuries in Asia and Europe.Once you have assembled your team the next challenge of leadership kicks in. This is the ability to get the team working on your agenda for action and to deliver results. To achieve this you have to be able to hold the attention of your team members as you explain your agenda. You will then have to motivate, inspire and excite your team so that they are all fired up to act on your agenda.
Capturing the attention of your team requires self-confidence, a clear vision and deep knowledge of the subject matter of your agenda. Understand the matters that are related to your agenda making sure you have deep knowledge of the core issues relating to the subject matter before the team.The more you motivate your team members with your knowledge of the subject matter of your agenda the greater will be the enthusiasm of your team members.
We should always remember that T-E-A-M stands for “Together Each Achieves Magic”.The members of your team must feel a sense of ownership of the agenda and be allowed to celebrate the achievements in contributing to the success of the agenda.
To motivate, inspire and excite your team into action do the following:1. Challenge limitations – Define the most difficult factors that need to be overcome to succeed. Explain to your team why others may have failed to overcome these factors. Tell them there are no easy answers but simultaneously stimulate their natural human curiosity and excite them into taking the challenge to succeed. Remember that the more difficult the challenge the sweeter will be the victory.
2. Focus analysis – Instead of suggesting possible answers, define interesting questions. After all, life is a puzzle waiting to be solved. Encourage your team to come up with scenarios that could lead to the solution or goal of the agenda by posing questions that stimulate questions from the team members. This process encourages a sense of ownership of your agenda by your team members who will get increasingly excited and stimulated to work on solutions. 3. Stimulate the mind – Turn on the creative juices with brain storming where everyone is encouraged to give their view from their specialist perspective. Hence, a person with an operations background may give insight as to the logistics involved in production. A legally trained person may point out the legal and ethical issues while a financial consultant may look at the economics of the venture. Putting all these together the public relations specialist could suggest the best way to sell the results of the agenda to the public.
Look at how Bill Gates identified the fact that there is more money in software development as opposed to hardware creation in the Information Technology industry. He focused on assembling a team of creative engineers led by an equally savvy business team that created a brand which opened windows to the information age.
Yes! We now live in a knowledge society. The next challenge is for a leader to emerge who can create a wisdom team of technology sages to move society into an even higher level of success, prosperity and happiness.
May your mind be stimulated to lead your team to greater success.
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