Leadership

Great Speaker = Great Leader?

February 16, 2008

Barack Obama has come under fire by the Clinton's for being able to speak well but offer little in the way of actual ideas or policies. Rush Limbaugh this week claimed that liberals hate George Bush because he lacks talent when it comes to public speaking. At first blush, the idea that a great leader needs to be a great speaker seems ridiculous, and yet if you were to name the first ten names of great leaders (by "great" I mean effective at getting large numbers of people to follow them, not that they were great people I'd love to hang out with), just about all of them would also be great speakers. Here's a list off the top of my head:

Churchill
Hitler
Mussolini
Stalin
Reagan
Martin Luther King
FDR
Lincoln
Gandhi
Lenin

Now, I frankly don't know much about Lenin or Lincoln's speaking abilities, but I know every other one of these leaders were specifically noted for their speaking abilities, and I suspect Lincoln and Lenin weren't too bad either.

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Rush Limbaugh Says Republican Candidates Lack Leadership

January 21, 2008

Rush Limbaugh didn't say they lack leadership experience, he said none of them were showing any particular leadership at the moment, and that if one of them were to step up and show some true leadership then the Republican primaries would quickly become a foregone conclusion. But he didn't say anything about what that leadership would look like if it were to be present.

So what's your take? What could the candidates (Giuliani, Huckabee, Thompson, Romney, and McCain...wait, is he a Republican? I can never remember...) do that would show true leadership and galvanize what is obviously a very fractured Republican base?

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Taking Criticism Constructively

December 26, 2007

A wise man once said "He who is offended when offense is not intended, is a fool; he who is offended when offense is intended, is also a fool." I've had a number of experiences with various "business leaders" who, although successful financially, seemed to have limited capacity to receive criticism constructively.

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Is Charisma an Important Leadership Quality?

February 8, 2007

The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs is the title of a Q&A session with Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book titled Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs. Had I the time I'd like the read the book, but I barely have time to read the article, but read it I did because this topic and the article highlight one of my gripes about the business world, although I think there is hope.

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Teaching Employees to Make Exceptions

January 22, 2007

I got my hair cut at Great Clips a month ago. While there, I heard somebody talking about a "touch up" policy I had never heard about before that allowed a customer to come back within a limited time period and get things touched up for any reason. I thought the time period that was mentioned was one month, but when I returned to Great Clips a month later, I found out it was in fact two weeks. At that point the employee had a choice to make--go against company policy and give me the touch up anyway, or tell me that company policy wouldn't allow her to help me.

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Successful Leaders Create More Leaders

November 3, 2006

I'm a fan of planned obsolescence when it comes to management. That is, I believe a goal of managers should be to make themselves unnecessary to the successful operation of their organizations. Not only can this be done by creating a structure that enables it, but by helping those who are managed to develop leadership skills such that they no longer need to be led but can function autonomously. In other words, I believe good leaders don't just get people to follow them, they create more leaders.

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Empathy and Showing Empathy

November 2, 2006

Empathy. Definition: feeling of concern and understanding for another's situation or feelings.

Have you ever met someone who didn't seem to understand who you were, how you felt, or what you were going through? Maybe you didn't consciously think "Gee, this guy lacks empathy" but maybe you thought about it in other terms. Maybe you felt the person "didn't get it" or "just didn't care." If you've thought that before, then you've had an experience with one of two people; someone who lacked empathy or someone who didn't show empathy.

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Leadership - New Blog Category

I'm starting a new section of this blog entitled "Leadership," not because I'm an expert on leadership or a great leader, but because it is something I'm interested in learning more about, and if I have a section on my blog about it then chances are I'll end up doing more research in order to be able to write content on the subject.

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Pride, Arrogance, and Leadership

December 14, 2004

I recently sent an email to the founder and CEO of a large online retailer. His company had recently created a new brand and a new advertising campaign to match. In my humble opinion, the branding as well as the ad campaign were poorly conceived, and I sent an email to the CEO offering my perspective on things. The CEO was not impressed with my observations, to say the least. I later learned the company had increased revenues 14% with the same ad campaign I loathed.

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