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Your ability to negotiate, communicate,
influence, and persuade others to do things is absolutely indispensable to
everything you accomplish in life. The most effective men and women in
every area are those who can quite competently organize the cooperation and
assistance of other people toward the accomplishment of important goals and
objectives.
Of course, everyone you
meet has different values, opinions, attitudes, beliefs, cultural values,
work habits, goals, ambitions, and dreams. Because of this incredible
diversity of human resources, it has never been more difficult and yet more
necessary for diplomatic leaders to emerge and form these people into
high-performing teams. Fortunately, leaders are made, not born.
You learn to become a
leader by doing what other excellent leaders have done before you. You
become proficient in your job or skill, and then you become proficient at
understanding the motivations and behaviors of other people. As a leader,
you combine your personal competencies with the competencies of a variety
of others into a smoothly functioning team that can out-play and
out-perform all its competitors.
When you become a team
leader, even if your team only consists of one other person, you must
immediately develop a whole new set of leadership skills. Whenever you have
problems, misunderstandings, or difficulties within the team, you reexamine
your values, your goals, your activities, your assignments, and your
responsibilities. You are more concerned with what’s right than with who’s
right.
Leaders are more concerned
with winning than with not losing. High-Performing teams run by excellent
leaders, are determined to perform in an excellent fashion. All members
know that their ability to work together in harmony and cooperation is the
key to the success of every one of them.
The wonderful thing about
becoming a leader in your work and personal life is that you can practice
the skills of influencing and persuading others toward a common objective.
You can promote the principles of excellent teamwork by establishing your
values and goals, determining your activities, and then leading the action.
And you can improve yourself by continually evaluating your performance
against your standards. One of the marks of excellent people is that they
never compare themselves with others.
They only compare
themselves with themselves and with their past accomplishments and future
potential. You can become an even more excellent person by constantly
setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing
everything possible to live up to those standards.
The more proficient you
become at getting the results for which you were hired, the more
opportunities you will have to get results through others. And your ability
to put together a team and then to lead that team to high performance will
enable you to accelerate your career and fulfill your goals faster than
ever before.
Now, here are two things
you can do immediately to put these ideas into action. First, think about
specific things you can do to work more effectively with the different
people on your team. Second, set high standards for yourself and for each
person and then dedicate yourself to achieving those standards.
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