What is leadership in business?

Clearly, an entrepreneur shows leadership. They start their own business, and then build from scratch. But the head of a team, department or large organization can also show leadership. What do these people have in common? A good way to answer this is to look at the difference between leadership and management, to simplify greatly:

· Leaders look at the big picture, welcome change, are good at motivating and influencing, and work well alone (or at the head of teams).

· Managers look at the details, welcome stability, are good at supervising, and work well as team members.

In addition, managers tend to get their authority from their role (a boss with subordinates), while leaders get their authority from their personality. People just turn to leaders for guidance, regardless of their position. They have a quality of personal impact.

Eight characteristics of a good leader

1. Vision. This means generating ideas about the way ahead and then getting buy-in (=commitment to a shared goal) from other people.

2. Motivation. As well as obvious things like salary, this includes praise, appreciation and recognition.

3. Emotional intelligence. This used to be called empathy or intuition. It means ‘reading people’ – knowing what they want or need.

4. Empowering others. Tell people what you expect from them, give them the tools they need to succeed, and then get out of their way. Learn to listen: nothing is more empowering than being heard.

5. Being trustworthy: your behavior should be consistent with your beliefs, otherwise people won’t trust you. Actions speak louder than words.

6. Taking risks and managing change: leaders need to be change agents – in a fast-moving world any organization that stands still will fail. But change brings resistance. Leaders have to explain why change is necessary, establish a process, involve everyone, provide support, communicate the outcomes and share the benefits.

7. Focus and follow-trough. This involves setting priorities and doing what you say you will do. Unfortunately, many leaders are poor finishers.

8. A sense of humor: the ability to laugh at yourself is a good way to bring others along with you. It demonstrates a degree of self-knowledge.

Motivation

A survey by Kaisen Consulting asked people in a wide range of industry sectors what made them feel good at work. Here are some of the results:

Notice the dominance of the top three categories:

A sense of achievement, and having that achievement recognized, appear to be strong motivators. Positive working relationships are also important. Notice also that ‘financial reward’ was only ranked sixth. This is quite surprising.

The researchers then asked people what made them feel bad at work/ here, the most common response by far was ‘a negative experience with colleagues’. A range of other factors were also mentioned: lack of recognition, company politics, stress, boring work, etc. items that were mentioned less often included: lack of support, having a bad boss, lack of direction and unsatisfactory level of pay. These did not seem to be important demotivators.

The researchers drew the following conclusions about motivation:

· In a task-oriented business world it’s important to remember that relationships and ‘emotional’ dimension to work are very important.

· Recognition and positive feedback are the oxygen of motivation.

· Employees ask: ‘What’s in it for me?’ Business success and customer motivation did not appear as motivational factors.

· Motivation and demotivation are not equal and exact opposites. For example, while achievement was the strongest motivator, ‘failure’ was rarely mentioned as a demotivator.

Questions

1. What things do all successful leaders have in common?

2. In what way do managers differ from leaders?

3. What are the characteristics of a good leader?

4. Think about historical examples of leaders and leadership.

5. What are the most important motivating factors according to the article?

6. The text mentions ‘praise, appreciation and recognition’ as being a part of motivation. Which one of these is the strongest motivator?

7. What top demotivators did respondents name in the given research?

8. What things motivate and demotivate you at work or study?

Exercises

1) Find a word in the first section of the text that matches each definition:

1. (two words) from the beginning ________________________

2. (three words) the whole situation, not just one part of it _____________________

3. the way in which someone is involved in an activity; position __________________

4. understanding how other people feel ____________________

5. knowledge that is based on feelings rather than facts ________________________

6. giving someone more control other their life and work _______________________

7. able to be trusted __________________

8. results ___________________________

2) Make phrases from the ‘Motivation’ section by matching items form each column: