Content may be king and knowledge may be power, but people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Many managers and supervisors who want to be effective leaders make the mistake of believing that because they are an expert on a subject that that makes them the boss. However, to be quite honest most people don’t want a boss.
What people want is to be inspired. What effective leaders do is inspire. Let me let you in on a little secret; being right doesn’t make you right. Haven’t you heard people say, “It’s not what you said but how you said it?”
Leadership does not occur until the information that produces action is transferred and acted upon. The transfer of information between people occurs through inter-personal skills (IPS). In order to be a more effective leader who maximizes the results of his team, assuming you have the content, you must improve your IPS. While some people are born with a naturally high level of IPS, it is still a skill; and skills can be learned and improved.
IPS is a composite of tangibles and intangibles; but of the tangibles there are four that I find to be foundational. The four are given here as the acrostic ALOR (pronounced like allure) because once mastered you will allure people into your goal. ALOR stands for attending, listening, observing, and responding.
Attending corresponds to your body language and positioning. How you position yourself physically and relationally to your team can make or break your effectiveness. It is important to remove as many barriers as possible, physical or otherwise, in order that information may transfer without being interrupted or distorted.
Considering that the world is much smaller now and that many businesses engage in a global market, it is extremely important to take cultural barriers into consideration when you are attending to your team.
Listening is a skill that most people perform poorly. Most people believe that listening is merely the result of being silent while the other party takes their turn to speak. However, effective leadership occurs where empathic listening takes place.
Empathic listening is more than being polite; it is listening deeply because you have a genuine concern towards understanding the desires of the speaker. This level of communication is achieved when the speaker can sense the concern of the listener; as a result the speaker is liberated into sharing openly.
Observing is the act of gathering information from your surroundings through careful observation. In the context of the skill of observing, a leader is best seen as a scout. During the days of the early settlers, when families and communities traveled in caravans (not to be confused with the ones made by Dodge); the scout would ride ahead of the pack in order to survey the upcoming conditions. He would gather useful information (e.g. weather, impassable terrain, danger) through his well developed observation skills.
A good leader today must hone the skills of riding ahead of the team and gathering useful information that helps the team stay on course and accomplish the goal.
Responding is not just a skill but it is an art form. Responding is the highest level skill of the effective leader. Effective responding is not only knowing the right thing to say or do; but saying it at the right time and in the right way. Interacting with people is not always a simple task because we are all different.
People have different personalities, different likes and dislikes, different temperaments, different backgrounds, different learning styles, different cultures, etc. Therefore, if you are going to lead people you have to be willing to put forth the effort to cross different boundaries in different ways.
Effective responding is a skill that will not be developed by the faint at heart (nor the lazy). You can have the best intentions, but if you do not respond to a person in a way that promotes unity the cord that binds the team is broken; and all the hard work goes rolling down the hill.
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Michael McFadden is a leadership and performance expert and founder of The Leadership Training Company that helps organizations and their leaders build and sustain productivity by learning to more skillfully manage the inner game of business and life successfully. Visit www.theleadershiptrainingcompany.com and sign-up for the FREE Leadership Coaching 7 Day e-course titled, “How to Inspire Your Employees to Reach their Potential.”