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Return To Leadership Development Article Archive   Why Leadership Skills Are Crucial To Developing Your Career Growth By David Mudie Most professionals are constantly developing new skills – usually technical in nature. New technologies are constantly being developed and accomplished professionals have to continually learn to keep up with them. But does learning new technologies give you all that you need in order to advance your career, or are there some other skills that your organization will highly value when it comes time for promotions? Every organization must be competent at three behaviors in order for it to survive. It must have a reason for existing, be able to manage itself, and be able to lead. If any of these behaviors are missing, it will eventually collapse. A Reason for Existing: An organization must have a reason for existing – that is, a product or a service. If there is no product or service the organization will not have a commitment in its staff nor will it have any means to generate revenue. Without a commitment people will lose interest in it and without revenue it will collapse financially. Examples of organizations that have no product or service include pyramid schemes. Pyramid schemes use the money being "invested" by new members to pay previous investors. The money is not being used to create a product or service that can be sold to create income. Eventually the scheme will run out of investment capital and there will be no means to generate revenue. The scheme will collapse and go bankrupt. A similar situation occurred in the late 1990s with internet startup companies. There were many companies that did not have a viable product but were highly valued by investors. There was a tremendous amount of money being invested in them which made them appear prosperous. The appearance of prosperity brought in more investment money. Just about everyone confused the market value of the company with its ability to generate revenue and be profitable. Eventually, in 1999, the investors did figure out that there was not going to be any revenue for many of these organizations. They withdrew their investments and many of the organizations collapsed. Without a product or service an organization will not survive. The Ability to Manage Itself: An organization does not just have to provide a product or service but also make sure that it is providing it in an efficient and profitable manner. It does not make any sense if you are providing the most amazing product if at the same time you are losing money every time you sell it. Organizations manage themselves through accounting procedures, manufacturing processes, and other policies. An organization that neglects the administration of its operations will most likely fail. Numerous organizations have attempted to focus solely on the product and missed sight of proper management. Other companies such as Enron and MCI WorldCom have had a product but deliberately mismanaged their finances in order to deceive themselves and their investors. Leadership: Management and leadership are often thought of as being the same. Individuals are promoted to a management position and then have people who report to them. Now they have to lead. In fact they should be described as being promoted to a management/supervisor or management/leader position. Policies and procedures are good for managing things but they do not motivate people. The ability to motivate or influence people to follow is leadership. It is often neglected because we confuse it with management. Many new managers are trained on how to create a budget but few are given training on how to inspire their team. Sadly they often end up trying to motivate their team through management principles. Have you ever worked for an organization that tries to motivate its employees by requiring them to account for every minute of their time (and is punitive towards those that are not 100% productive)? That approach really is not inspiring and will most likely produce poor results compared to an organization that effectively shares its purpose, values, and vision with its employees and helps them see how they benefit from it. Speaking about purpose, values and visions, have you ever been involved with an organization that does not know its values, purpose or vision - A company where you can ask 5 different people why the organization exists and get 5 different answers. Such an organization is in trouble and needs a healthy does of leadership before it collapses in personnel issues. It does not matter how large or small an organization is, it needs to be competent at all three behaviors. In fact organizations within larger organizations need all three. For example, I once worked for a large telecommunications company. The purpose of this organization was to provide cellular communications to subscribers and to manage it profitably. The organization also had an executive leadership whose job it was to guide the organization towards that goal. They had all three behaviors. I worked in the Information Systems department of that organization. We had our own purpose, to provide information processing services such as billing and accounting processes. We had our own management procedures such as project management and budgets and we had our own leadership. Within the IS department I worked for a team that wrote fraud prevention software. Our purpose was different from the organizations that we were part of – but it was part of what was needed in order for them to achieve their purpose. Our management was distinct because it supported our distinct purpose. Finally our leadership was distinct as well. Without the leadership that we had our team would have been unmotivated and without direction – a clear recipe for failure. But the need for these three behaviors does not stop just at teams and organizations, but goes on to individuals. An individual must have a purpose for existing (within the team), management and leadership as well. The leadership may be to motivate others or maybe just himself/herself. Either way, without it there will be a loss of direction and the product or service will suffer. On many occasions I have witnessed technical professionals who are promoted when they have not had an opportunity to learn and develop leadership skills. They do not have the ability to motivate their new team. As a result the team suffers, the department suffers, and the organization ends up suffering. The team ends up losing its moral and direction. The staff becomes unmotivated because they ca not see the importance of their contribution. Usually the team gets reorganized and the newly promoted manager is moved on to somewhere else or moved out. It is the smart professional who avoids this and takes action in advance by learning the skills before they are required. By learning about leadership skills specifically you can benefit now by doing a better job of motivating yourself and those that you work with while preparing yourself so that you are ready when the next promotion becomes available. It is not difficult to start building a foundation of skills that will give you the ability to effectively motivate. You can learn about the three attributes every leader needs to have in order to be effective at my website http://www.effectivelyspeaking.com/leadership/attributes.htm, You might want to have a look around while you are there and learn how you can Master the Art of Public Speaking. Copyright © 2006 David Mudie Originally afraid of public speaking, David Mudie was forced to face his fear and go on to excel at it. David is now an accomplished speaker, having achieved an Advanced Toastmasters Gold/Competent Leader (ATM-G/CL) from Toastmasters International. He has also competed in and won numerous speaking competitions. David has spoken for The University of Windsor Law School, Oracle's Collaborate Software Conference, JD Edward's Focus Conference, The City of Cambridge, The Rotarians and numerous other organizations. In addition to his Toastmasters designation David holds a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. David now teaches people how to conquer their fear and go onto deliver excellence in public speaking. He does this primarily through his website, but also through writing, speaking engagements and personal coaching. You can learn more about How to Get Over The Fear of Public Speaking by visiting David's website – EffectivelySpeaking.Com. keywords: Leadership | Career Growth | Public Speaking Corporate Leadership Development Programs

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