Developing Your Leadership

Combine your desire with practice and develop your management strength

All of us should strive to provide leadership at all levels in our sales organizations and administrative offices. It is essential to our company's growth and overall strength.

With effective leadership at all levels of our company, we will continue to grow and prosper. If we all become more effective leaders, our organization should grow at a faster rate and realize our goals and dreams sooner.

But what is leadership?

How do we become more effective leaders?

Can leadership be taught

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

According to Webster's dictionary: Leadership is the quality of being a leader—his or her capacity to direct others on a course or in a direction.

The easy part of your job as a leader is setting your goals and pointing your group in the right direction. The hard part is staying on course and reaching your goals.

In the field, you can set sales goals and commit to improved service to our customers. But, making these things happen is something else altogether.

It takes effective leadership to make things happen. Leadership is the ability to inspire other people to work together as a team in order to attain a common objective.

CAN WE TEACH LEADERSHIP?

Leadership is learned, not taught. You don't have to be brilliant to be a good leader. But you do have to understand other people—how they feel, what makes them perform, and what ways are best to influence them.

Leadership is learned through our experiences in everyday life, not out of books.

People will follow leaders who are fair, decisive, persistent, tolerant, trusting, helpful, open, honest, straight-forward, and respectful. These qualities are life skils—they are not learned from manuals or textbooks.

Leaders enjoy working with people and helping others succeed. The qualities attributable to sound leadership are gained from our everyday experiences. They are inspired by a burning desire to work with and help others achieve our common objectives.

IS LEADERSHIP IMPORTANT?

A common misconception has been heard in recent years: that if there were no leaders, everyone would have an equal chance to succeed. Well, that's wrong.

Even in groups which operated without choosing formal leaders, some capable people rose to the top and took over management of the groups. They wanted to be leaders and they took advantage of the opportunity to accomplish something positive.

In our company, we've always held that people who demonstrate good leadership should be rewarded with recognition that they are leaders. We promote our leaders up the ladder of advancement; at each step, they must show increased knowledge of how to be an effective leader.

Certainly, we can help each person become a better leader. We provide training videos and manuals as part of our company support. But you must want to be—deeply desire to be—a more successful leader, before anything can be learned.

Anyone with this desire can become a leader. It has nothing to do with natural ability or information in books.

The Duke of Wellington never stopped practicing leadership, and he never let it go to his head. Napoleon, on the other hand, stopped being a good leader when he started believing he was more important than the people who made him a leader. Histroy records that Wellington beat Napoleon decisively at Waterloo.

In our company, we can each be a leader. Whether you are a supervisor or an area manager, the demands of leadership are the same.

You must motivate—imbue—each person in your group to want to succeed. And then you must help them accomplish more than they thought they could do by themselves.

Can you learn this? I have confidence in each person in our company.

To be a good leader, you must start by following others. Observe what makes them successful. Copy them. Ask questions. And above all, keep learning.

The leadership you provide will make you grow, and your growth will make our company strong.

Article ghostwritten for vice president of international durable consumer goods direct marketing company.