Program title – Leadership Skills for Effective

Managers

Academic Script

Introduction:

No one can deny the power of leadership. It is the only element that brings
changes in the life of an organization. Many individuals, groups and
societies have changed their approaches, behavior, and beliefs, merely
due to their strong leaders. No one can define the term leader and
leadership properly but everyone can easily understand the power of
leadership. It is very rightly said that a leader’s main function is to evoke
from each of his people their fullest potentials and capabilities. A leader is
very strong motivating force that is why many experts equate leadership
with management. From their point of view no organization can survive,
succeed and grow without effective leadership. Every success and failure is
the result of leadership. The vision that a leader shows about
organizational goals is the spirit of the organizations. Many critical
situations are addressed not by assembling resources and manpower but
by acquiring a right person to address the problems. Image of a successful
organization is represented by the person who leads it and similarly a great
leader is known by the organization for which he works. Often it is
impossible to distinguish between the image, personality and entity of a
leader and that of an organization.

1
Most of the great organizations are known because of great leaders that
led them. Many business organizations are having their leaders as a
symbol of success.

Whenever we talk about HCL, it is Shiv Nadar. When we talk about Wipro it
is Azim Premji and when it comes to Biocon it is Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

A visionary leader never offers temporary solution to problems. On the

contrary he addresses the problems by offering an effective and permanent
solution. He not only knows how to solve the problem but he also
understands how to meet the requirement of the organization on a long
term basis. He looks into the future and takes appropriate decision. The
best example of a visionary leader can be of a manager who thought of an
innovative product and novel solution and also accept the idea before its
time has come. This brings success to the organization. Every leader must
possess a good number of skills useful in a given situation. No one can say
that only a particular skills set is useful or essential for a leader. It depends
on the situation and the problem that an organization faces. Different
situation demands different skills. A leader should be wise enough to
understand the needs of a situation should apply appropriate skills set.

A study of many successful organizations indicates that the principal factor

behind their success is leadership and the guidance of the leader. Similarly
failure and debacle of many organizations is mainly due to the failure of the
leader. Hence for every nation, society, corporation or company the most
essential element is to have a dynamic and visionary leadership.

2
What motivates a subordinate is not merely the incentive and
rewards alone. It is developing the urge and desire to change, to
grow and to be successful. A leader who inspires the subordinates can win
inspite of all odds because it is not the incentive but it is the zeal, the
passion to win that makes a group a winner and that is what the true
function of a leader.

Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus have rightly said “Leaders are the people
who do the right things. Managers are people who do the things right”.

An effective leader uses different methods to direct an organization. The

key to succeed in an organization is to possess right leadership skills.
Unless and until a manager possesses the right sets of skills, he cannot
succeed in a given situation. There is no one specific skill that a leader
must possess but a leader must possess a set of skills that makes him
effective, successful and competent leader.

Making of an inspirational leader

Laotzu has rightly said “A leader is best when people merely know he
exists. When his work is done and his aim is fulfilled they will say we did
this ourselves.” From this point of view a leader must become an
inspirational personality. What makes him a motivator and a successful
change agent is worth understanding. A leader cannot be a successful
person unless and until he has certain qualities and abilities that make him
different, unique and competent to lead a situation by staying with his
followers. An inspirational leader is known for certain basic abilities which
can be rightly described as: -

i) Create passion to achieve great things

3
 ii) Give people hope to survive and grow
iii) Serve with empathy to win confidence
iv) Inner strength to exhibit moral and competence
v) Pursue excellence to establish one’s entity
vi) Be visible but don’t interfere to gain desired acceptance

Create passion: -

The Dilbert principle talks about a simple definition of leadership which

says getting people to do the things they don’t want to do is the real art of
leadership. A good leader thus is a person who brings in change. He
creates enthusiasm and excitement among his followers by winning their
respect. He keeps his promises and treats people with integrity, openness
and fairness. A leader usually communicates a focused mission and vision
of the future to his colleagues and subordinates. He believes in winning
their respect and never cheats or deceives his subordinates.

Give people hope: -

Napoleon the great has rightly described “A leader is dealer in hope”. A

leader must inspire hope through a common purpose. A leader thus
cultivate a feeling of trust and removes unwarranted fears in the minds of
subordinates. He always leads people to take a firm action on any decision.
He actually persuades pragmatism and gives a feeling to his teammates
that they have fair chance of succeeding.

4
A leader offers opportunities, aspiration and hopes. He creates
the spirit of winning. An Army general who discourages his army
will never win. A manager who insults his own subordinates never
succeeds.

Serve with empathy: -

A good leader should have a cool head but a warm heart. Great leaders
are in true sense great persons. A true leader takes humility as his burden
and therefore leadership is in the eye of followers. A leader must serve
others by understanding their problems and approach of decision making.
A leader must not let his emotions affect his decisions. He should remain
stead fast and decisive because he believes in what he is doing is just right
and appropriate. He should give a right understanding as to the cause
behind a particular action or a particular decision. A true strength of a
leader is his firmness and determination.

Inner strength: -

The real worth of a leader is his intrinsic value and inner strength to
contend with the problem that he faces. What gives this inner strength to
the leaders? It is right understanding of his own self and integrity and
honesty of the cause. A leader with high morale proves his ability to ready
and adopt to a different situations.

5
Pursue excellence: -

A leader must possess vision to understand the long term interest of an

organization. The most important part of the leadership is visionary
approach and skills to react in a proactive manner. A leader must achieve
excellence through self motivation. He must have boundless energy,
extraordinary enthusiasm and thoroughness to understand the situation.
This usually works well when the leader is in the learning mode and he is
willing to change his perception. A leader must be ready to challenge
conventional wisdom and adopt innovative approaches of solving the
problems. He should accept new ways and means of problem solving. For
a leader, a simple way is knowing what to do and how to react?

6
A leader always emphases on performing the best. He never
compromises with ordinary and not so good state of affairs. He
expects his subordinates to deliver the best. Excellence is the point of
culmination of a leadership

Be visible but don’t interfere: -

Test of great leaders is that they are always in touch with their subordinates
and colleagues. They know how to interact, observes, respond and
communicate with their subordinates. A great leader is the master in the art
of empowering people. His influence as a leader is seen in terms of
performance of his subordinates. He is a facilitator, coach, guide and path
finder for his subordinates.

7
Developing leadership skills

Development of any skill is a continuous process. This is more so when it

comes to leadership. It is necessary that the leadership skills need to be

8
sharpen from time to time throughout a manager career. It is not
true that just possession of certain qualities will make manager a
great leader.

Development of leadership skills is a continuous and well defined process.

Developing leadership skills thus is something where a manager learns
different aspects of managerial functions and practices them to be an
effective and competent manager.

A manager must cultivate a set of certain skills that makes him to perform
his job effectively. These skills are:

A. Visioning skills to visualize future

B. Persuasion skills to be able to win
C. Motivation skills to create confidence
D. Conflict resolution skills to solve problems
E. Change management skills to accept new value sets
F. Direction setting skills to chose the approach
G. Crisis management skills to resolve conflict and threats

9
 Visioning
Skill
Crises
Persuasion
manageme
skill
nt skill

Direction Motivation
setting skill skill

Change Conflict
manageme manageme
nt skill nt skill

Set of skills required by a manager

A. Visioning skills:-
The concept of vision should be understood in a right perspective.
Vision means ability to look into future and estimate the most likely
trend of change. Vision is capacity to identify opportunities in
uncertain time. A visionary leader is ready to identify the likely
changes in the environment and how he will lead the organization to
its desired destination by adopting an appropriate course of action. A
leader with vision concentrates on emotional resources of the

10
organization. The term ‘emotional resources’ means and
includes vision, ambitions, ideas, principles and promises.

No leader can be successful without having a right vision regarding

organizational achievement. A visionary leader plans for future
success of an organization. He knows where the organization stands
today and where it should lead. A leader also rightly understands
what is the true purpose of an organization. He is able to
communicate its goals and targets in quantified manner and in
qualitative terms. The vision of a leader is dreamed destination. It
should be followed and accepted by all his followers, so that they can
assist him/ her to attain the same.

Great visionary leaders develop friendly and mutually beneficial

relationship with their peers, promotes creative thinking, teamwork
and a climate of friendship. He develops a feeling of belongingness
and affinity. A leader’s vision generally covers different areas of
managerial activities. This usually includes the following: -
i) It should align with direction and purpose of the organization
ii) It should reflect the true spirit of an organizational culture
and values
iii) A leader should be able to motivate his subordinates and
infuse confidence and spirit of teamwork in them.
iv) A leader should develop feeling of passion and loyalty
towards organization among all his fellow members
v) He should be able to deploy their capacity and potentials to
the fullest extent.
11
 vi) He should encourage his subordinates to
undertake productive activities and spirit of
creative thinking

The principal purpose of a visionary leader is often reflected by four

simple guidelines:

i) A visionary leader cultivates a sense of shared

responsibilities and develops right understanding as to
the purpose of the organization.
ii) He develops ideology of value based thinking and
commitment to organizational values.
iii) He has a quality of purpose and encourages open, fair
and two way communication
iv) A visionary leader believes in enthusiastic response
towards organizational achievements.

How visionary skills can be practiced by a leader

A leader can develop a visionary approach by appropriate thinking

about the purpose of an organization. He should have a right
understanding of environment in which he is working. He should
know the socio-economic mailleau in which he is working. He should
create the spirit of purpose and feeling of belongingness. He should
develop a right understanding about an organizational philosophy and
system. A leader should have true understanding of history and
course of development of the organization. He should gain insights
from previous experiences of the organization, so that he can know
as to what the organization can do in these situations.

12
 A leader should develop clarity of vision in the present
circumstances and design an appropriate plan that can work
to address the problem. A leader should be able to anticipate the
likely course of future events. He should be able to forecast the likely
events and their implications on organizational success and
achievements. A right understanding as to future helps leader to
minimize risk and maximize the results.

To practice visionary skill, a leader must possess an appropriate

understanding of a situation. He should be able to peep into the
future, he must acquire an ability to foresee the things or events that
are likely to occur and prepare himself and his subordinates to face
the unpredicted situation. He should develop himself to accept the
risk and exhibit his courage under turbulent situation. It is always
easy to navigate in a calm sea but a leader who can face the
challenges of disturb and challenging situation is a true leader.

B. Persuasion skills:
Persuasion is a form of communication which is aimed at convincing
a group or a person, an idea which they would otherwise not support.
A leader performs the function of persuasion very regularly. He has to
convince his subordinates, support his colleagues about the ideas
which often are not acceptable due to psychological or other reasons.
The barriers are due to the difference of opinions and
misunderstanding about a particular idea or concept.

Persuasion is a very difficult skill. People usually do not sacrifice or

change their opinions or ideas. Many people stick to their ideas and

13
opinions because of their strong commitment to certain
values and presumption which they have formed after
certain experiences or development of ideas.

The art of persuasion is one of the important skills so that he can

retain interest of his fellow members. A good leader never believes in
forceful acceptance of his opinions. He knows it well that convincing
is an art and he must cultivate to be a successful leader. Effective
leadership is not making people believe in something by force but
convincing and winning their opinions. Persuasion fails when the
focus is more on contents of the message rather than on the way it is
presented. A message often fails to persuade people due to
ineffective or faulty presentation of ideas and facts.

An effective manager must identify the type and nature of the group
to which he intends to convey. He should develop a style of suitable
presentation and the art of communicating the things in the right
manner. He should design and develop a suitable managerial style of
presentation and decision making.

The important reasons of failure of persuasion can be stated as

follows:
(i) People are unwilling to understand a new concept or idea
(ii) A right concept is communicated in a wrong manner
(iii) The contents of the message are wrongly formed
(iv) The socio-economic and cultural background is not rightly
understood by the leader
14
 (v) A leader has not understood the type of group
and their nature in the right perspective.

The audience or the group of people that a manager has to convince

can be classified in following categories

a) Skeptics
b) Charismatic
c) Followers
d) Controllers
e) Thinkers

The major features of these groups are stated here:

Sr. no. Type of Characteristics

group
1 Skeptics  Strong personalities
 Disbelief in ideas
 Challenging by nature
 Defensive or offensive to a particular idea
2 Charismatic  Dominant by nature
 Enthusiastic response to an idea
 Ability to absorb large information
 Get captivated by new ideas
 Willing to learn and change
 Consistent in performance
 Willing to shore information
3 Followers  Believe in old but proven ideas
 Cautions in taking decisions
 Challenge new ideas and concept
 Open to learn new concepts
 Believe that they are pioneers in doing
something new
4 Controllers  Believe in accuracy and thorough
understanding of a situation
 Logical and analytical bent of mind
15
  Rational and unanalytical approach
 Heat uncertainty and ambiguity
 Strong personality and they believe that
they know everything
 Internally they feel fear and insecurity
5 Thinkers  Ambiguous nature of personality
 Very difficult to understand their approach
towards problem solving
 Difficult to convince logical in arguments
 Always think in rational manner with
adequate evidences to prove their
arguments

For a leader it is difficult to decide a style for such different types of

audiences. One cannot convince a divergent set of followers and
group members by using a unique or common style. There has to be
different approaches to convince different people. As such a leader
may adopt different persuasion skills considering the nature of group.

a) Skeptics:
For skeptics the leader must handle delicately and should not
challenge their beliefs and ideas. On the contrary he should win
their confidence by developing a feeling of trust.
b) Charismatic:
A leader should not attain to match the excitement of charismatic
followers. He should explain idea along with risk associated with
its implementation. An honest and upfront analysis of risk can help
to portrait right picture of the situation. A leader must gain
confidence and trust of these kinds of subordinates.

16
 A leader with charismatic ability usually is a person who
can create confidence among his followers. He enhances
their spirit and makes them able to perform much more than what
they can do under normal condition. A charismatic leader
transforms the personality, changes the mindset and develops a
right attitude.
c) Followers:
To convince the followers, a leader should create a confidence
and positive thinking. He should often exhibit appropriate
evidences to prove his point. He should be logical and systematic
in explanation. Proven and reliable ideas usually work when a
leader works with the follower.
d) Controllers:
In case of controller, a leader should adopt a strategy of removing
doubts, disbeliefs and fears. He should provide adequate
information and be rational in approach. He should create a
climate of confidence and applicability of an argument in a given
situation.
e) Thinkers:
Thinkers are the people who can be convinced by explaining
drawbacks of the idea right at the beginning. A logical argument
with unpleasant approach is the right way to convince a thinker.
Good leaders usually adopt a simplistic, rational and logical
approach when they want to convince this category of
subordinates and followers. He should allow sufficient time and
place to such followers and participants to remove their doubts
and objections.
17
C. Motivational skills:
The principal task of a leader is to motivate people. Ability to motivate
is the major challenging function of a leader. However, different types
of subordinates peers and colleagues require different approaches.
Motivation involves fostering enthusiasm in others. Therefore a leader
must cultivate an environment in which work is considered inspiring
and satisfying. A positive climate results in increasing the productivity
of an organization and level of employee’s participations. A leader
can motivate people by adopting following approaches:
 Creating a climate of truth, honesty and transparency
 Developing a desire to be the best in the given set up
 A leader must generate confidence about competence and
caliber of his subordinates
 The desire to be great helps in improving loyalty, commitment
and level of contribution.

The best work can be obtained not just by paying higher wages but
also cultivating the passion about the work in the employees.

D. Conflict resolution skills:

Conflict is a reality in the organization. It is the normal human
tendency to doubt, challenge, and disagree with others. People
compete for work, authority and safety. These basic elements to

18
compete for survival and success are one of the reasons
behind conflicts among people. Many organizations accept
conflict as a natural phenomenon. Often managers are not well
trained to face critical situation having seeds of conflict.
A leader must possess ability to address conflict and troubled
situation. Calmness, passion and composed state of mind help a
leader to address different situation. It is heard that the true spirit of a
leader is exhibited by solving different problems.

It is necessary that a manager should be properly trained to face

situation of crisis and for this purpose a leader should be trained in
conflict resolution skills.

There is no unique way to address and way to resolve conflicts. Truly

speaking a manager or leader should master different facets of
conflict resolution skills. These are:
i) Assertive communication
ii) Active listening
iii) Problem solving
iv) Negotiation

i) Assertive communication:
A manager cannot always accept every view and opinion of his
subordinate and colleague. He must possess the ability to

19
 stand up for his/her rights and rightful opinion. This
doesn’t mean he should overpower the rights and
opinions of other person. However, he should have a firm view
and approach to look at a particular problem. Assertiveness
helps in minimizing many problems.

A few important tips to be assertive are:

a) Don’t get angry or annoyed with others without knowing their
rights, duties and reasons for forming a particular opinion.
b) Explain every activity, phenomenon in clear words
c) Try to have complete and clear picture of a situation
d) Understand how others behave and explain their behaviour
to themselves and others.
e) Provide detailed explanation as to benefits and limitation of a
particular solution and remedy

ii) Active listening:

Listen to the opinion and views of others. Good listening
reduces many behavioural problems. It minimizes doubts,
suspicion and confusion. A right approach to encourage two
way communications is to develop habit of effective listening.

iii) Problem solving:

The third and most important is ability to respond favourable
and problem solving. When a leader shows disability, he
20
 minimizes many interpersonal conflicts. Rightly
address small and trifle issues reduce the chances of
occurrence of severe and aggressive problems. It also helps to
arrive at win-win situation.

iv) Negotiation:
No one can resolve by being assertive. A good leader always
shows a positive tendency of accepting opinions and views of
others wherever possible. He is not adamant and steadfast on
his opinions and views. On the contrary he shows positive,
willingness to reform and modify his opinions.

Ability to negotiate is a great art and skill. It helps to arrive at

mutually acceptable solutions. It minimizes tension at work
place. Openness, flexibility and resilience and sensitivity are
few important traits to become a good negotiator. Good
negotiations are based on objectivity, sense of being patience,
integrity and credibility of the negotiation.

A good leader must exhibit these skills in order to be effective

and successful to lead the organization in desired direction.

Seventeen leadership checkpoints of General Douglas Macarthur

Read them to yourself and seen what you think

(1) Do I taunt my subordinates or strengthen and encourage them?

21
(2) Do I use moral courage in getting of my subordinates who
have proved themselves beyond doubts to be unfit?
(3) Have I done all in my power by encouragement, incentive and spur
to salvage the weak and erring?
(4) Do I know by name and character a maximum number of
subordinates for who I am responsible? Do I know them intimately?
(5) Am I thoroughly familiar with the technique, necessities, objectives
and administration of my job?
(6) Do I lose my temper at individuals?
(7) Do I act in such a way as to make individuals want to follow me?
(8) Do I allocate everything to myself and delegate nothing?
(9) Do I develop my subordinates by placing on each one as much
responsible as he can stand?
(10) Do I develop my subordinates by placing on each one as much
responsibility as he can stand?
(11) Am I interested in personal welfare of each of my subordinates,
as if he were a member of my own family?
(12) Have I the calmness of voice and manner to inspire confidence
or am I inclined to irascibility and excitability?
(13) Am I inclined to be nice to my superiors and mean to my
subordinates?
(14) Am I a constant example to my subordinates in character,
dress, deportment and courtesy?
(15) Is my door open to my subordinates?
(16) Do I think more to my position that Job?
(17) Do I correct a subordinate in front of others

22