Marketing Career Zone

Although new and existing managers are commonly given the benefit of management training to fill skills gaps or ensure that existing skills are kept up-to-date, leadership development tends to be more overlooked.  Given the importance of effective leadership in creating change in the workplace, however, it is perhaps surprising that more people do not choose to take part in training which is more specific to the learning and enhancement of leadership skills.

The terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ are rather like the terms ‘advertising’ and ‘marketing’.  Despite often being used interchangeably, leadership is only one facet of management, in the same way that advertising is only one facet of the marketing function.  Management involves the organisation, planning, directing and controlling of human and other resources, but the management (controlling) of people and the leadership (directing) of people are, however, two different things.

The easiest way to think of the difference between being a manager and being a leader is that a manager is responsible for ensuring that existing principles and already established ways of doing things are adhered to, whereas a leader sets new directions for others to follow.  Management suggests maintaining the status quo, whereas leadership is concerned with taking action which will lead to change in the direction that the leader wishes to go.

Management also suggests a hierarchy and a certain lack of choice on the part of those being managed, whereas effective leadership requires the leader to develop a voluntary following.  Leadership is not something which is done to people, but with them and clearly each of these functions require very different approaches.

Leadership training courses generally focus on making you more aware of your current leadership style and abilities and the impact that these have on the people that you work with, as well as on learning and developing the key ingredients of good leadership, including:

•    The principles of motivation and the range of techniques that you can use to motivate your own team

•    Relationship management, including how to build productive relationships with others, how to influence others and how to communicate clearly and effectively

•    Decision-making, problem solving and delegation

•    Performance management and how to evaluate performance expectations objectively and then prepare and conduct performance management discussions

Within any organisation, convincing others to move in a new direction can be an enormous challenge and the ‘push’ technique can often be extremely counter-productive.  Good leaders inspire people to achieve their best by using their own personalities, values and passions to persuade and encourage them in the preferred direction and the 5 key attributes and qualities that are commonly found in effective leaders are:

1.    Passion

A leader must exhibit passion for his cause in order to obtain the buy-in of a willing group of followers.

2.    Respect for others

Good leadership is contingent upon having respect for others.  Leadership without respect for others is nothing more than manipulation.

3.    Vision and creativity

Good leaders constantly ask themselves ‘How could things be done differently or better?’  Their passion is backed up by good ideas, effective strategies and the initiative to move the vision forward.

4.    Drive and knowledge

Good leadership requires a good deal of expertise in one’s own field because without this, ideas will not be practicable and the leader will lack credibility and the ability to convince others.  Continuous learning is essential to develop great leadership skills.

5.    Good communications and interpersonal skills

Good leaders need to be able to assess the skills and abilities of their staff and use their powers of persuasion to convince and motivate others.  If their communications and interpersonal skills are lacking, they will fall short of their objective.

Learning leadership skills on the job can be difficult, simply because the other aspects of management tend to leave little time to devote to it.  Having said this, however, once the principles and techniques of effective leadership have been learned via a leadership training course, the real world workplace environment is absolutely the right place for leadership skills to be practised and honed.