Mind Tools' "How to Lead" - Contents

This comprehensive leadership course contains 8 modules covering:

The Meaning of Leadership

In the “Meaning of Leadership” module, you'll learn the up-to-date theory that forms the foundation of effective business leadership. Starting with stories such as those of Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, you'll then draw on your own experience to understand what leadership is and how it works.

 

You'll see how leadership ideas have emerged and changed over time, helping you make sense of the often-conflicting and old-fashioned ideas about leadership that cause so much confusion. And, in learning to distinguish good ideas about leadership from bad, you'll develop a clear, reliable and confident understanding of the things you need to know.

 

With this picture of who a well-balanced leader is and how he or she behaves, this module charts the structure of the rest of the course, in which you will develop the characteristics, skills and behaviors that will make you a highly effective and respected leader.

Get to Know Yourself

You'll find out more about these characteristics in the “Get to Know Yourself” module, which gives you five important self-assessment tests. These help you understand:

These tests help you understand where you stand with respect to leadership. They show you strengths in which you can be confident, and help you identify the areas of development that you need to target later on in the course. This is your starting point in building an effective, self-confident and well-balanced leadership style, which we look at in the next module.

Get “The Right Stuff”

Once you’ve identified strengths and areas of development, the ‘Get “The Right Stuff”’ module gives you the skills and techniques you need to build this well-balanced leadership style.  

 

With these skills, you will increase self-motivation and self-confidence, project a positive and dynamic attitude, communicate effectively and become appropriately sensitive to other people’s feelings.You'll learn to increase your self-motivation and become positive in outlook, helping you become a dynamic and energizing leader. Your self-confidence will increase as you recognize and extend your strengths, counter your weaknesses, and eliminate corrosive self-doubt.

 

You'll develop the emotional sureness of touch shown by the best leaders, and learn to build the empathic, mutually trusting relationships with team members needed if your team is to perform "as one".

 

And you'll learn to make time for the essential but easy-to-overlook tasks so essential for effective leadership, like making time to communicate vision, setting clear performance expectations, providing support for team members and helping them understand the real value of the work they do.

 

These techniques help you develop and project yourself in a well-motivated, positive and self-confident way that other people will respond to and respect. And they help you develop the traits and poise of a successful corporate leader - someone clearly on the fast track to success.

 

Create Winning Ideas

But if you are to lead people, you also need a clear, well-tested and fundamentally sound vision of where you want to go.

 

You'll learn how to build this vision in the “Create Winning Ideas” module, which shows you how to gather the information you need to build a robust vision. It teaches you how to monitor change and think about how the future may unfold. And it helps you create and communicate a vision that’s well aligned with your values and the values of your team and organization.

 

These tools lay the foundations of “common sense” and “wisdom” that people around you will come to trust. They help you make good decisions, even under intense pressure. And they help you build a clear and credible vision of the future that your team will find truly inspiring.

Get the Power to Rouse

This inspiration is the subject of the “Get the Power to Rouse” module.

 

In it, you'll learn how motivation works, and find out how best to motivate and inspire your team, with the huge performance improvements that come with this.

 

You'll understand and be able to discriminate between good and bad sources of power, and between strong and weak methods of influence. Understanding this helps you develop a positive, honest, ethical and open leadership style that your team will trust and seek to emulate. It helps you avoid the traps and mistakes that lead people to become (unintentionally) manipulative or autocratic.

 

You'll find out how to build a deserved reputation for expertise that your team members and peers will come to respect, value and trust. You'll learn to win honest power and respect, and understand how to influence other people in an open, mature and positive way.

 

And you'll learn to inspire and motivate your team to give their very best. You will be a truly inspirational leader. And you'll gather the fair rewards (financial and emotional) that come with this.

Getting Things Done

Having developed the vision and inspired your team, you still have to manage the tricky task of implementing your vision.

 

The “Getting Things Done” module helps you do this. You'll find out how to pick a good team, where the right people are doing the right jobs. You'll develop a confident way of giving orders that is neither weak nor overbearing. And you'll find the balance needed to resolve conflict, maintain standards and achieve an excellent delivery.

 

You'll become a master of effective implementation, "firmly-but-fairly" keeping people on target and performing effectively. You'll give orders in a humane way that ensures that the job gets done, while still respecting the rights of team members. And you'll know when to step in and lend a hand, and when to let people get on and learn. All of this will earn you the respect of your successful, hard-working, and increasingly-effective team.

Develop Your Team

Business leadership is rarely a one-off transaction. It is usually a relationship where leader and team learn to work together and, if all goes as it should, develop ever-growing effectiveness and mutual trust.

 

In the “Develop Your Team” module, you'll find out how to build your team’s capabilities and develop these trusting relationships and teamwork skills. You'll uncover the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of your team members, and understand their training, coaching and development needs. And you'll learn how to help them grow as happy, self-confident, skilled and highly-effective team players.

Get the Extra Edge

The final module picks up other factors which are important for leadership effectiveness.

 

You find out how to take “calculated risks” without taking foolhardy ones. You see how to build a strong and supportive network. You look at the tricky task of leading teams made up of people from different cultures. And you learn about the specific techniques needed to manage large-scale change.

 

These techniques help you navigate some of the difficult issues which can cause leadership failure. And they help you develop the wisdom, respect and success that you, as a good leader, will come to deserve.

 

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