Good Leader and Leadership

¶ … Leader?

The guide Best Practices for Tobacco Control Programs has among the best practices there is opportunity to glean what effective leadership looks like from an outcome perspective. For example, on page 64, the following tasks are identified as success factors:

• Strategic planning

• Recruiting and developing talent

• Coordinating program implementation

• Developing a fiscal management system

• Coordinating across programs

• Educating public

These are all important functions, illustrating that leadership needs to do the following. Leadership needs to work with people in different organizations, needs to have vision for planning and human development purposes, have a high level of managerial functionality and should be able to bridge communication gaps to achieve outcomes.

Furthermore, a good leader should be able to build other leaders. Page 66 of the guide talks about the importance of multi-level leadership, which fostered buy-in and leadership from a variety of different, related entities, and also from within. There is a recognition that leadership is something required throughout an organization in order that the organization is a success. Preparing staff to move into leadership roles was a key element of the program. Brungardt (1997) notes that leadership is made, and there is a critical role for leadership development programs to play in situations where a lot of leaders are required to implement a strategy.

This distills down to six key leadership skills: building coalitions, effective communication, organization, conflict management, relationship building, ability to share decision-making and the ability to delegate. Zerfass and Huck (2007) discusses the role of strategic communication as a critical component of leadership. This refers to the idea above -- building coalitions and relationships, the ability to delegate and the ability to share decision-making. With effective communication that ties back to strategy, all of these are made easier.

For me, these skills are generally sources of strength for me, but not all. I feel that I am strong in everything except relationship-building and coalition-building, though I am definitely improving on that front. Perhaps coalition-building in the biggest challenge right now.

These areas of weakness are there because of a general weakness in direct interpersonal communications. While I am effective in communicating what I want, I may not be the strongest at getting to understand what others want. I am learning to listen better and respond to others based on their needs, which is really helpful because interpersonal communication is really what lies at the heart of leadership. Being able to take different concepts and tie them together has always been easy; being able to take different interests and focus everybody on a singular goal has not been. So while I have the baseline logical skill, I have been let down by my willingness to put aside my own interests long enough to listen to what others need.

The other areas are much greater areas of strength for me. I am an effective communicator, despite my need to improve my listening skills, because I convey ideas clearly. When I write or speak, people understand me, and when directly people to perform tasks or buy into ideas, clarity matters.

I delegate well. I like delegating, and I like putting trust in my team. I hire good people specifically so that I do not have to do all the work, and make all the decisions, by myself. I want a team of experts around me, because it means that my team will be better, and that of course will reflect well. So delegation is not a problem, and neither is the ability to share decision-making. I believe in ideas, so I actually adopt the best ideas regardless of where they come from, and reject inferior ideas, again regardless of source. This helps people at the bottom of the organizational chart feel good about their contributions, knowing that they will be heard if they have something to say, and of course sometimes it ruffles feathers above me on the organizational chart. It's bad politics to reject your boss' ideas, but when those ideas are bad, you have to find a tactful way to do so. Go to bat for your team if they should be the ones making the decisions, and the team will be stronger for it.

That cuts to the heart of why I would be a good leader, according to these criteria. When you master these criteria not only do you have the ability to foster a lot of confidence among your team, but you also are in a position to foster confidence outside of your team. You work well with other teams, knowing that you will take their good ideas and run with them, but that you will fight for your team's good ideas to.