What is Management/Leadership

Every organization must have its own philosophy for Management/Leadership. We can’t give you a philosophy but we can help you develop one by first determining a solid definition of Leadership?

What would your definition be? Quickly write it down and then continue.

The best definition I have personally ever heard came from W. Steven Brown, author of the 13 Fatal Errors Managers Make…and How You Can Avoid Them. The definition is:

Leadership is the SKILL of ATTAINING PREDETERMINED objectives with and through the VOLUNTARY cooperation and effort of other people.

We feel this definition is so strong because of the words that make it up.

Leadership is the SKILL: Being a skill, Leadership techniques can be learned and with practice they can be perfected. All managers should be committed to improving their Leadership Skills on a daily basis.

The next key word is ATTAINING. Leadership by necessity must be results oriented. It’s not about working hard, giving it the old college try or your best effort but ATTAINING. It’s also not about ATTAINING just anything but ATTAINING…

…PREDETERMINED objectives. That is doing what you say you will do and being accountable for your team’s performance. Effective Leaders can effectively PREDETERMINE what the objectives will be. The best way to PREDETERMINE the future is by knowing the past, studying you company history and knowing your team members.

Knowing your team members leads us to the fourth word of VOLUNTARY cooperation and effort of others. We can’t push people, we must lead them. That does not mean we must be doing more of their work than them but building an environment that communicates to our people that they really count.

Sharing a common definition will help any organization develop a well founded philosophy!

The major problem I find in working with managers for over 30 years is you can ask 12 managers to define it and end up with 12 different definitions. That is not good because the success or failure of any business is determined based on five prerequisites and they are:

A Quality and/or unique product

Proper timing of our ideas being introduced into the market

Sufficient Capital and the ability to manage it effectively

A Productive workforce

Quality Management/Leadership

You will note I placed Quality Management/Leadership at the bottom of the list because it forms the foundation for the other four. I did because effective Leaders contribute to the other four. For more information on these ideas and more, I would encourage you to explore our Leadership in Action and/or Practical Sales Management development systems as they are build upon the principles.

As always, I hope this has helped and please contact me if you desire more information, I’ll be happy to email you a PDF overview!

Best regards,

Jim Strutton, CEO
Accountability Plus, Inc.
770-205-8171
[email protected]

You have our permission to forward this URL of email to anyone you feel needs to read it.