Transformational Leadership. Social Entrepreneurship

In his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey focused on a very important concept that we often overlook. Proactivity. Before you go ahead and look for its meaning from Meriam-Webster, I’ll tell you that it’s not there.

Proactivity simply means taking the wheel of your life and driving it to your chosen destination. You are not a cart being dragged by a buffalo to your destination. Nor are you a falling star that lands on who knows where. If you are proactive, it means that you have initiative and you have the power to drive yourself and arrive at the place that you want to be.

At this moment, look deeply into yourself. Are you allowing other people to dictate how you live your life? What about your directions? Who is setting your direction?

If you want to take full control of your life, you need to make certain adjustments. It simply won’t do if you are waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Create the opportunity! It’s as simple as that!

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A Strategic Plan is used mainly by corporations and organizations to help them establish their businesses and ensure success. This is how the organization decides on the strategy, the direction, how to make decisions and allocate resources for the pursuit of a vision. This process takes time, effort and resources. But businesses recognize that if they are to compete in the global economy, they need a strategic plan.

How do you conduct strategic planning?

Part of this process is the analysis of the situation of the organization through various tools and resources. One of these tools is the SWOT analysis. This kind of analysis measures the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of the organization.

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Welcome to the final installment of our Developing Your Character for Leadership series.

A mid-level manager or an emerging leader does not have trouble navigating the organizational structure and hierarchy of a small and medium sized organization. But as the organization grows in size, so does the complexity of its structure and hierarchy.

Bureaucracy! I could almost hear you cringe and puke at the word. It has received so much flak in the world today because of the way government officials performed in delivering public service. But bureaucracy refers to the structures and hierarchies that make public service possible. It can be bad. But the good news is, it can be good.

When you are a new leader in a large organization, you will have to deal with its bureaucracy. You will need to go to the IT department, coordinate with the procurement department, look for the decision makers in senior management and deliver products and services through the sales and marketing team. All that is part of the bureaucracy.

But it really can be quite a challenge. Getting to know your organization is like going on a date. You ask your date about some seemingly mundane questions but each one would reveal deeper things about your date.

1. Put people first before systems and processes.

Get to know your subordinates. Ask about their interests, their desires and also their hopes and dreams. This will help you understand their motivation, which you can use in helping them achieve their personal goals as well as organizational goals. Set aside a weekly (or monthly) time for coaching and mentoring with your subordinates.

2. Establish ground rules, expectations and reporting schedules.

Your team needs to understand the goals, how you plan to achieve them and how they can fulfill those goals. This will also minimize, if not prevent, possible conflict that may arise.

Monitoring the people who work for you and with you is very important. Are they up to date? Can you make it to the deadline of your project? Sure, when you develop greater trust between you and your team, you can pretty much leave them on their own and not worry about the timeliness and the quality of the outputs.

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Welcome to the third installment of our Developing Your Character for Leadership series. This is a series of articles on how you, as a leader, can enhance your leadership skills and maximize good impact in your organization.

Leaders are always in pedestals. They are always on display and being watched by all sorts of people—from those who are involved in the organization or the spectators from the sidelines.

Trophy, Axe or Shrug—three things that most leaders get for their performance. Excellent leader get the trophy, the bad ones get axed and the average, unremarkable ones get the shrug.

Who gives these prizes to the leaders?

The answer? The people to whom the leader is accountable.

Accountability is very important in business, in government and in all aspect of business world. Accountability is founded on the integrity of the leader. Without integrity, no trust will be given to the leader. Without trust, there is no leadership. All these are connected by accountability.

A leader has authority. But such authority does not come from heaven above proclaiming him as the savior of the organization. No. The authority comes from the stakeholders, usually in the form of a governing board with a set of laws and regulations.

The authority of the United States president comes from the blessing of the American voters in accordance with the process set forth in the US Constitution and laws. The authority of a Chief Executive Officer usually comes from the Board who chose him to run the organization.

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Welcome to the second post in our Developing Your Character for Leadership series.

Reality check. Leadership is such a difficult task that a lot of people will not willingly accept such positions. If you sought the leadership position you have right now or it was thrust to you, you are duty-bound to your organization and to your members to perform. Since you need to perform anyway, you might as well do it excellently.

What better way to sabotage your leadership by giving up your responsibility.

Giving up responsibility is not like abdicating a throne and installing a new republic in the ashes of a kingdom. Every little decision that you make will tell if you are doing your job or you are actually giving up responsibility.

One of the surefire ways to develop leadership is to look at the wrong practices you are doing right now and changing such practices. The process of improvement is long and sometimes difficult but once you go through that journey, you can certainly turn your organization around.

Are you giving up responsibility by committing these leadership mistakes?

Being the soloist!

Do you usually find yourself doing most of the important tasks of leading and managing? If you haven’t noticed, you actually have team mates, members and followers who are willing to do your bidding. Well, some of them might not be willing to do it but since they are in the organization, they will at least obey you.

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