Mental Preparation for Leadership

Your Altitude is determined by Your Attitude. Attitude is formed in mind that drives the action. Preparing mind is more important internal activity for Leadership. Communication is vital piece in preparing the mind. What you think is expressed through your communication. “Integrity between what you say and what you are” – is important leadership quality. In order to explain mental preparation, communication I present conversation excerpts that happened between me and my friend sometime back.

One day, my friend came to my home with a long face. I asked him for the reason. He told someone in the road scolded him with bad words.

I asked him – “Have you replied to that person?”.

Friend told “Yes. I did. I used all the bad words I know against him and his family”.

I asked - “Is that the person known to you?”

Friend told - “No. I am seeing him for the first time. I don’t know what went on his mind to scold me”.

I asked – “Do you think what you did is right?”

Friend told – “Yes. How come he can scold me in the road? I need to give him reply. But still I worry I haven’t scolded him with strong words as he did”.

I asked – “Can you tell me one thing. If a person comes and scold you an “idiot”. Do you think “you are an idiot”?.

Friend replied – “No. But how to stop him then?”

I told – “Anybody can wound others body as it is outside and accessible. But words wound only when you allow it to reach your mind. Tell me this – Do you accept a parcel which has address of your neighbor?”

Friend replied – “How come? I don’t accept as it is not for me.”

I told - “In the same way, if anyone uses words that are not for you, you need to ignore.”

I continued – “Visuals & Words are direct entry to your mind. If you allow them fully then they will take control of your brain. You act as per others wish. In your case you allowed & completed accepted his words and then replied to it. Is that right?”

Friend replied – “Oh. Yeah. He would have thought I was somebody else and did so. I am wondering Why I reacted there. Even now I am carrying that worry with me. Its is not right.”

I told him – “Here are my advise -

Have faith in yourself.

Don’t allow anyone to easily control you by words.

Take conscious effort to filter out unwanted things reaching your unconscious mind.

Using bad words is like having unripened fruit when ripened fruits (i.e. good words) are available.“

References:

1. “Manase oru Manthira Saavi”(Tamil) Self-development discourse by Suki Sivam.

2. Thirukkural (Tamil) by Thiruvalluvar

Five Levels of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

In the past few weeks, I got excellent opportunity to go through lot of articles, books, audio tapes and videos related leadership topics. My whole September spent majority on Maxwell’s Leadership work. I can say, I got overview on “Maxwell-ism” of Leadership. There is a wonderful piece literature about leadership levels in “Developing Leader within You”. I thought it would be nice to provide my view about that here.

* As stated in one of my earlier post, Leadership is a journey & it does not end with an achievement of certain qualities.

* I view Maxwell’s five levels of leadership mainly within an organizational structure but it can be applied beyond that.

* There are 5Ps of leadership in the increasing order respectively - Position, Permission, Production, People Development, Personhood.

* Maxwell nicely put all the indicators starting with letter “R” so there will be 5Rs corresponding to each “P” level – Rights, Relationships, Results, Reproduction, Respect.

* One of the “Maxwell-ism” says “Leadership is Influence. That’s it. Nothing more; nothing less.” & all these five levels are carefully built on this Influence factor.

* You are valued differently by each one in your group. So you stand at different levels of this ladder with each one. Each time you need to strive getting higher in the levels with each one.

* I got a position level leadership role few years back. I am having good relationship with few in the team and able to get extra effort from them through that. But I don’t know am I there in anyone’s book under Production or People Development levels. But after reading these levels I will surely go up in the ladder and attain higher leadership levels. I thank Maxwell for showing the path for all of us.

* To me, I can say “Gandhi” is in Personhood level.

Key Points from Maxwell’s text about climbing up in the ladder.

I encourage all of you to go through “Developing The Leader within You” to fulfill your leadership career.

References:

1. John C. Maxwell, 2001. ‘Developing The Leader within You’, Injoy Inc., pp 5-13.

Key Leadership Skill – Relationship

There are two kinds of people in this life:
Those who walk into a room and say, “Well, here I am!”
And those who walk in and say, “Ahh, there you are.” —- Frederick L. Collins

Above quotation tells nicely about the essence of relationship building. All our worldly activities becomes successful with our best relationships. You might have read a story about a dog that saved its master’s life. How come that is possible for a dog? It is the outcome of master’s great relationship with his dog.

Relationship - Networking

Better relationship leads to better understanding. Understanding gives meaning, comfort and success in life. All of these leads to ultimate happiness which is what everyone wants and searching in this world. In search of meaning for his life Einstein said – “Life isn’t worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.”

It is worth pointing one event from Einstein’s history. Toward the end of his life, he removed the portraits of two scientists — Isaac Newton and James Maxwell — from his wall. He replaced them with portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer. Einstein explained that it was time to replace the image of success with the image of service.

Networking is part of leaders everyday life. Building relationship is most important for their success. Out of those two types quoted start of this article – which one is yours? Are you the one extending help? or Are the one getting more help from others?

Are you mostly trying to make yourself happy? or are you interested in the happiness of those around you? Look around. Closely watch all Leaders around you. It is obvious that, in their life, service occupies most of their time than self-centered activities.

Foundation of Leadership lies on the Relationship between Leader and Follower. It is another key skill for any leader. Strength of relationship of leader and follower decides the levels of commitment & involvement towards the vision. This eventually brings unbreakable bond that leads to success.

Success Lesson from John C.Maxwell

It is excellent narration about “Successful people know their purpose of Life” by John C.Maxwell in a Leadership Conference.

Part 1:

 

Part 2:

Transformational leadership Studies & Hypotheses

Leadership is such an wonderful area of study where the exploration happens everyday endlessly! Some theories become old and obsolete – some theories are debatable – some theories are profoundly interesting. Compared to other theories, Transformational leadership is somewhat new, explored everyday due to its popularity, interesting in nature and there is an easy way to get results using Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire™ (shortly MLQ™).

MLQ™ is the most widely used instrument to assess transformational leadership theory [9] and “is considered the best validated measure of transformational and transactional leadership” [10- p. 338]. With the help of MLQ™, leadership behavior can be evaluated and trained accordingly. MLQ™ has history from 1980s. Right now, MLQ™ Form 5X (developed by Bass & Avolio. 1995)[8] and its modified versions are used for transformational leadership studies.

Here is the steps: Start with a question on leadership & its relationship with something. Then circulate MLQ™ to target audience. Get the results and compare it against your assumptions. Create your Hypotheses.

Here are few examples:

Question: Is Similarity in Leadership Related to Organizational Outcomes? [4]

Hypotheses:

H1:  Perceived similarity between superiors and their leaders with respect to transformational leadership is: 1) positively related to positive outcomes, and b) negatively related to negative outcomes.

H2:  In addition to perceived leadership, perceived similarity between superiors and their leaders explains unique variance in outcome variables.

H3:  The correlations between transformational leadership and outcomes can be ranked as follows:  SHTL – SLTL / DHTL – DLTL.

Question: Gender differences in transformational leadership among the field leaders of New South Wales Police students [5]

Hypotheses:

Female leaders would attract universally higher ratings on factors thought to be associated with greater effectiveness as a leader. That is, it was expected that female police leaders would be viewed as being more transformational and less laissez-faire than males.

Furthermore, it was expected that female leaders would attract higher effectiveness ratings and that followers would be more satisfied with their female leaders.

Ultimately, followers who had female  leaders would also be expected to expend a higher degree of effort at work/in training.

Question: What mechanisms explain the positive effect of transformational leadership?[6]

Hypotheses:

H-1 Transformational leadership has a positive effect on job satisfaction.
H-2 This impact is partially mediated through job characteristics and intrinsic work motivation.
H-2-1 Transformational leadership has a positive effect on job characteristics.
H-2-2 Job characteristics have a positive effect on intrinsic work motivation.
H-2-3 Intrinsic work motivation has a positive effect on job satisfaction.

Job characteristics partially mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction. This was not found for intrinsic work motivation. The results of this study underline the impact of transformational leadership on perceived job characteristics and employees’ job satisfaction.

NOTE: MLQ™ is trade marked product and you can contact Mind Garden® for further enquiry – Mind Garden® is a registered trademark of Mind Garden, Inc. All the hypotheses work are outcome of respective authors work and not my opinion on those questions.

References:

1. Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire™ – The benchmark measure of transformational leadership – Bernard M. Bass & Bruce J. Avolio – from web site URL: http://www.mindgarden.com/products/mlq.htm

2. The Full Range Leadership Model™ – http://www.mlq.com.au/flash_frlm.asp

3. 41 5 Transactional and transformational Leadership – document retrieved from web site URL – http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000001791/05_05_kapitel.pdf;jsessionid=E9EEB7BF0A73678BF5AC450F3F84F2F2?hosts=

4. Is Similarity in Leadership Related to Organizational Outcomes?  The Case of Transformational Leadership March 28, 2005 – document retrieved from web site URL –

http://leadershipcenter.osu.edu/library/publications/leadership-discoveries/2005/march-2005-is-similarity-in-leadership-related-to-organizational-outcomes-the-case-of-transformational-leadership

5.Gender differences in transformational leadership among the field leaders of New South Wales Police students – document retrieved from web site URL – http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.89.1734&rep=rep1&type=pdf

6. The influence of transformational leadership on job satisfaction: The mediating role of Job characteristics and intrinsic work motivation Bösch Walser, R., & Heilmann, T., Social and Economic Psychology, University of Zurich – document retrieved from web site URL – http://www.psychologie.uzh.ch/sowi/team/heilmann/documents/BoeschHeilmann_Poster_eawop2009.pdf

7. DEMO profile of MLQ output http://www.testcentral.ro/files/mlq_f_en.pdf

8. Bass, B. M. and Avolio, B. J. 1997. Full range leadership development: Manual for the multifactor leadership questionnaire, CA, Mind Garden.

9. Kirkbride, P. 2006. ‘Developing transformational leaders: the full range leadership model in action’, Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 38, No. 1 pp.23-32.

10. Ozaralli, N. 2003. ‘Effects of transformational leadership on empowerment and team effectiveness’, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp 335-344.