Leadership and time management

“Please call my secretary for a meeting – she knows when I’m busy” is often heard from an important CEO?

If you yourself do not manage your time, how are you able to manage the time of the people you lead?

To develop a time management skill means to become aware of how one uses his time. William Penn said: “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” And yes, there never seems to be enough time, unless you're the one that serve the time. Nothing can replace a time wasted, it can never be regained. Time management is a resource in organizing, prioritizing, and succeeding in what and how you perform.

A leader is burdened by numerous things almost always with limited time resources. Just worrying about time limitations and putting off or postponing may lead to indecision and consequently inefficiency. Due time pressure you resort to implement instead of analyze first. In leadership inefficiency occurs when unrealistic time estimates are made. Most of the time is lost due to issues resulting from poor organizational skills. This leads to ineffective meetings and finish with a leader micro-managing. The latter is also supported by failing to delegate tasks and performances. Many bad leaders are also not so strong in planning. They have not a clear idea about prioritizing, standardizing, or implementing organizational policies and procedures. They rather tend to deal with urgent tasks and thusly postpone the important ones till they become urgent (see my blog: Cause and consequence / Urgent and important).

Leadership and influence

Within lots of studies and researches on and about the nature of leaders, many aspects of leadership still remain a secret. There are books and programs that teach how to be a leader. They give a list of what constitutes a leader. With over 200,000 respondents describing 20,000 leaders Zenger, Folkman, and Edinger conducted a four-year study to determine what makes an outstanding leader. The results showed that the ability to ‘inspire and motivate to high performance’ was the single most powerful predictor of being perceived as extraordinary leader. Why the single most? There definitely are other qualities engaged too.
I believe that there is no recipe or checklist on how to be a leader and how to influence others.

Does a leader firstly need to build an effective interaction to exert influence or is he able to influence people without building relationships first? Is it really necessary to influence others? if we are looking at the public media: Is a journalist able to influence society without having a relationship with majority or every one of them?

Have you ever tuned out on a conference or a meeting because the speaker was too wordy? Is your mind wandering when someone doesn’t get to the point? On a lot of business meetings the importance of getting to the point rather sooner than later is often overlooked. The people that do not comply with it cannot command or influence others. Why, for some people, it is easier to get attention? The key ingredients of it are “listening and hearing”. If you don’t stop talking, you have no way of knowing if you’re being heard. From this one would deduct that ‘if you want to have influence, learn to get to the point quickly’. Not necessarily...

EGO and Leadership?

“The ego” – a positive or a negative feature? Is it a necessary ingredient, an essential to had by an exceptional leader?

We all seem to be able to spot a strong ego in others. Brain studies cannot point to the place in a brain where ego could exist, what could it be? Outside of a few technical papers ego, is still a very poorly defined concept. Animals don’t have it, for them it is only an awareness of self. Studies show that awareness of ‘self’ in humans is allocated to the left brain. Could this be the ‘true’ place for our ego?

A research showed that at least 99% of all human problems are caused by the false opinion of ‘self’. The most obvious and known falsities are about our perceptions of doing right to environmental, in economic and in political issues. There are others false opinion like the ones generated among and within families, different groups or societies, friends and enemies. But does a self-important demonstration of power or ego always give the result one expect by being egocentric? I’m positive that in most cases it does not.

The ego presents one of the biggest barriers for people to work together effectively. When people get caught up in their egos, it erodes their compatibility, emotions, reasoning. It blurs the understanding and cooperation. And we mostly get just the unproductive clash of egos.

Dao De Jing

Dao De Jing is a transcript of around five thousand Chinese characters in eighty-one chapters or sections. The chapter divisions were during history in later editions reorganized and supplemented with commentary. The title of the Dao De Jing text comes from the opening words of its two sections: DAO represented in chapters 1 to 37 and DE from chapter 38 to 81.

To explain the title we can separate containing terms. The term Dao was explained in my blog “Dào (Dao, Tao) – the Way” and De in “De – Virtue –Dé”. The third word Jing is translated as ‘canon,’ ‘great,’ or ‘classic’ text.

Thus, Dao De Jing can be translated as ‘The Classic/Canon of the Way/Path and the Power/Virtue.’ Even if this well-known text title did not become generally used until the Tang dynasty (618–905), it is fundamental to philosophical Daoism and it strongly influenced other old Chinese schools, such as Legalism and Neo-Confucianism. This ancient book is also central to Chinese religion, not only for religious Daoism, but also Chinese Buddhism which, when first introduced into China, was largely interpreted through the use of Daoist words and concepts.

Leadership and succession

“A person who does not worry about the future will shortly start to worry about the present” is an ancient Chinese proverb.

Unfortunately, still rare occurrence is leadership succession which is and should be too important to ignore.

A company CEO is irrevocably gone. Who will take his position? Or, the top executive is attracted by your competition. Is there anyone new ready to fill the role? What would you do: you may end up with an empty C-suite or, even worse, get an under qualified person to fill the job because simply there is no one better to take it over.

Transition period in the top management position may present quite hazardous times for companies. If the previous CEO has had significant and sound results a worry about his successor’s ability to maintain the same momentum will inevitably arise. To avoid a future crisis in leadership succession there should be developed and implemented plan for leadership succession beforehand. This should cover planned process of leadership transition but also the unplanned ones. Important functions will thusly in large amount continue uninterrupted.

Increasingly large and globally integrated companies take leadership development and CEO succession extremely seriously. In one study of more than 200 CEO successions the researchers found out that in contender succession turnover among senior executives has a positive effect on a company’s profitability but in an outsider succession it has a negative impact. So, companies face two ways to fill the empty position: with internal process of development of a specific candidate or hire externally and choose the best free one on the market.

Leaders and Self confidence

Why, if self-confidence is so important in nearly all aspects of our lives, do so many people struggle with it?

A child playing with the father who throws him in the air: does a child laugh and ask for more? Then, when a child is high above your head you ask him “Would you be a star fighter pilot?”  Child won't hesitate to say yes! However, why then most adults are so fearful of choosing a career that could provide them a professional satisfaction and leave those they are not satisfied with? Is it because of a vicious circle in which people who lack self-confidence can find it difficult to become successful and consequently self-confident?

In martial arts, when you face the opponent your level of self-confidence is shown in many ways: by your posture, your movements, your reactions, your behavior during the combat, your body language and your verbal language (if you speak, what you say etc.). Everything reflects your (lack of) confidence. If you hesitate, you lose. A well-known truth is that self-confident people inspire confidence and/or respect in others.

Inspiring the confidence in others is one of the key ways in which a leadership process perpetuates. A leadership is all about having the confidence to make decisions, to show to your followers the vision, to communicate good and bad news, to inspire others. If someone is afraid to make and commit to a decision, all of the communication and empowerment in the world won't make any good to get confident.

Are Leaders Born or Made?

A timeless debate like the age-old controversy about “a chicken and an egg” is more or less applicable also to the question whether leaders are born or made. In the most texts I've so far read the prevalent answer is: a leader is born.

Personally, I’m more for a kind of the in-between position: early genetics shown in childhood is an imprint that is hard to undo. Later, learning and practice bring new qualities and dimensions to leadership. Statistically, leadership capability will definitively fall along the Gaussian distribution.  Some people are, indeed, born leaders but they still need a lot of work and learning to become true leaders and to get even better as they go along. At the bottom of the curve there are others who, no matter how hard they try, simply aren't ever going to be leaders.  They just don’t have the innate wiring. All in between start out with a very good prerequisites and are hard workers and learners but mostly never become outstanding leaders.

It may be true that some people feel more inclined and are better prepared to take on leadership roles and then consequently learn and develop the necessary skills to become a superior leader. Certain basics of good leadership can be self-taught, but a number of useful skills will be acquired through experience developed over a time. Understanding leadership functions is important to develop skills and capabilities to then achieve a successful leadership style matching one’s own character and talents. Therefore, modern theories about leadership involve a combination of personality traits and also specific skills, capabilities learned over time and gained through experience. It is rather a life learning process and not a semester at an MBA school.