The key job and responsibility of the leader is to teach the "student" to take responsibility for her self-development, yet remain accountable for the result. The results should be achieved by developing highly capable individuals to work effectively as teams. 

Leadership development is a shared responsibility. Organization should put great emphasis on selecting people who are highly motivated to pursue self-development. However, this does not absolve the teacher of responsibility. If people fail to develop, the blame lies primarily on the teacher or leader for not enabling, encouraging, and inspiring the development of his/her staff. 

People development cannot be left to chance or happenstance. And it cannot be the responsibility of anyone other than the leader or manager who is closest to the and directly responsible for the people who need development.

TOYOTA. The name signifies greatness-- world-class cars and game-changing business thinking. One key to the Toyota Motor Company's unprecedented success is its famous production system and its lesser-known product development program. These strategies consider the end user at every turn and have become the model for the global lean business movement.

All too often, organizations adopting lean miss the most critical ingredient--lean leadership. Toyota makes enormous investments in carefully selecting and intensively developing leaders who fit its unique philosophy and culture. Thanks to the company's lean leadership approach, explains "Toyota Way" author Jeffrey Liker and former Toyota executive Gary Convis, the celebrated carmaker has set into motion a drive for continuous improvement at all levels of its business. This has allowed for: Constant growth: Toyota increased profitability for 58 consecutive years--slowing down only in the face of 2008's worldwide financial difficulties, the recall crisis, and the worst Japanese earthquake of the century. Unstoppable inventiveness: Toyota's approach to innovative thinking and problem solving has resulted in top industry ratings and incredible customer satisfaction, while allowing the company to weather these three crises in rapid succession and to come out stronger. Strong branding and respect: Toyota's reputation was instrumental in the company's ability to withstand the recalls-driven media storm of 2010.

But what looked to some to be a sinking ship is once again running under a full head of steam. Perhaps the Toyota culture had weakened, but lean leadership was the beacon that showed the way back.

In fact, writes Liker, the company is "as good and perhaps a better model for lean leadership than it ever has been." of innovation and growth. Yet, "Industry Week" reports that just 2 percent of companies using lean processes can likewise claim to have had long-term success. What the other 98 percent lack is unified leadership with a common method and philosophy.

If you want to get lean, you have to take it to the leadership level. "The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership" shows you how.

Being a leader is a lonely job. Anyone running an organization – a corporation, a department within that corporation, a school, a church, a battalion or a local business – must accept the fact that the role they have is often a difficult, sacrificial and solitary one.

But that doesn’t mean it should be thankless or unfulfilling. Or for that matter, always lonely. When humble, well-intentioned leaders convince themselves that they are supposed to be completely without needs, they create big problems for themselves and their organizations. 

Let me explain.
Even the most mature, humble and unselfish leaders are inevitably going to find themselves in a position of need from time to time. What I’m talking about are genuine feelings of disappointment, frustration, under-appreciation, burn-out.

Most really good leaders, believing they are doing the right thing, tend to deal with these feelings on their own. Maybe they have a spouse who is good at listening, or perhaps they have a reliable executive coach.

Other good leaders do what my school football coaches used to tell us when we were tired or a little injured: “suck it up.” Essentially, they ignore their feelings, reminding themselves that their job is a difficult one and that they should be tougher.

But neither of these strategies is completely sustainable. Eventually, even the toughest, most emotionally durable leaders must address the legitimate feelings they have with the people who are most directly involved with the issues that are causing those feelings. Because when they don’t, they inevitably put themselves in a position to harm their organizations.
When human beings allow genuine feelings to ferment without resolution, they eventually, and often unconsciously, let those feelings leak out in one unproductive, unresolvable way or another. In most cases, they end up behaving in ways that are slightly passive aggressive, autocratic or unnecessarily critical of team members. 

Team members, who don’t know what is going through their leader’s mind, can’t possibly understand where this is coming from, and so they’re left to either acquiesce to the sudden autocracy, or to resist the leader’s arguments and criticism. Essentially, they are blind to the real issues at play, which leaves them incapable of responding in a productive or useful way.

The only way for leaders to address this kind of situation effectively is to openly admit to their team that they feel frustrated, or disappointed, or over-burdened, or under-appreciated. Then they’re going to have to let their team members digest that information, and begin the messy process of working through those issues with honesty and humility.

Most good leaders who are reading this are probably thinking, “The last thing I want to do is tell my direct reports that my feelings are hurt.” They’ll be afraid to come across as weak, or even worse, needy. As noble as that may seem, in reality it is a subtle form of pride and invulnerability. Leaders are just as human as the people they lead yet they often refuse counsel from their team. Worse yet, it deprives staff members of the information they need to figure out what actions they can take to alleviate those feelings.

The truth is, when humble leaders acknowledge their humanity, even when that humanity is not necessarily pretty, they are giving their people a chance to understand what is really going on in their leaders’ hearts and minds, and allowing them in that moment to be the stronger party in the relationship. Not only will that allow them to address whatever issues need to be resolved, but it will make the team stronger and more resilient going forward.

This same principle applies to the job of leading children and families.

Leaders are responsible for creating an environment in which future leaders can blossom. This environment must simultaneously nurture and severely challenge the potential leader which seems contradictory, but is seen as complimentary in many large organizations.

Leaders need to respond to individuals based on their needs rather than their faults. Leadership masters encourages us to see what others need - even our enemies - and respond accordingly.

Good leaders do this well. They don't lead out of a predetermined package of behaviors, but size up every situation and discern what must happen to reach the desired goal. Like a half-back who reads the defense, then calls an audible from the line of scrimmage, good leaders remain flexible and may change their response, based not on what a person deserves, but on what they need to succeed. Good leaders follow this path in difficult situations:

They need - They aren't afraid to admit they need to listen and get Understanding.
They read - They evaluate what has happened and what steps are best to take.
They feed - They communicate what they've observed to key players.
They heed - They act on the basis of their discovery, even if it means change.
They lead - They provide direction to those involved.

The four values for leadership mastery. These values are the bedrock of many great managers and leaders, some don't even know they are doing these steps, its instinctive. for others they can be mastered with dedication, commitment and practice.

The first step is understanding. These four values are:
•Self-Development.
•Developing others.
•Change for the better, daily improvement.
•Creating vision and aligning goals.

Self-development. The first stage of great leadership is self-development, the key trait that distinguishes potential leaders from everyone else is self-development. Leaders actively seek to improve themselves and their skills through mentoring, books, study, self reflection and feedback from managers and piers alike.

Developing others. The second stage of leadership mastery is taking on the task of developing others. I have often said that the best way to learn something is to teach it. All leaders must actively engage in coaching and developing not just star performers or favourites, but everyone on their staff. The best measure of a leader is what is accomplished by those they trained. Use partnering for performance strategy for best results.http://www.whamond.net/4/post/2011/12/leadership-develops-daily-not-in-a-day.html

Change for the better. Always look for improvement. Challenge the status quo, and encourage new idea's. You must work to be able to handle daily small changes without loosing focus on the overall objectives. If change is a part of your being, then small blips on the radar won't upset the whole process, this will be the norm. Leaders must enable, encourage and be coaching for changes for the better.

Creating Vision and Aligning Goals. Ensure that the right big-picture goals are accomplished. The vision of Goals must remain the focus when working on point three, yes change is encouraged, but only to achieve the overall objective, the goals. Align your daily efforts to achieve the goals of the organisation.

Conversation is an important part of leadership and change as:

•Vision must be shared, before it can be lived, this requires conversation.
•Change is underpinned by conversation. Organisations change, when people change and people change one conversation at a time.
•Employee engagement is driven by meaning and purpose, this requires conversation.
•Execution requires alignment of action. this requires conversation.

Given the importance of conversations to leadership, the following principles serve as a useful guides for leaders looking to shape conversation:

•Leaders are the custodians of an organisations conversation. Conversation happens on a daily basis in within teams and organisations and much of this conversation occurs by default. By this I mean that it’s aimless and unproductive. The quality of an organisation’s conversation is the leadership’s responsibility. To effectively navigate change leaders need to be proactively engaged in focusing, shaping and influencing an organisation’s conversation. The quality of the conversation can be directly correlated with the quality of the organisation’s leadership. Using conversation deliberately means that we need to think carefully about how we will craft conversation and how we can use it purposefully.Quality conversation leads to effective decision making, engaged employees, a compelling vision and aligned execution. This requires leaders have a clear point of view about, what the organisation needs to be talking about at this time.

•Effective conversation is about meaningful inquiry. An effective conversation is always based on asking questions that matter. This means that leaders must to be open to multiple perspectives and view points. To explore all facets of an issue requires open questioning your primary tool. Asking not telling, using open ended questions then standing back to listen. This is the key skill of inquiry. What is the ratio between asking and telling in your daily conversations?

•Conversations shape the context in which people act. Effective leaders use conversation deliberately to shape the organisations direction. However, without a clear philosophy and vision, the shaping of the organisations conversation cannot happen. Leaders need to have a clear message that effectively sets the container in which conversations take place. A great container for conversation require leaders to be clear about the following issues:
•The organisations purpose – why it exists?
•The organisations key objectives – what it needs to achieve?
•The business model – how it makes money?
•The leadership philosophy – how people behave?
•Their goals, priorities and actions – what is most important, what should be do first?

•Language and words shape meaning. Effective leaders are very aware of the impact of their words. What a leaders does and what a leader says, are amplified and exaggerated by their constituents. Given this, if leaders don’t take charge of their words and carefully shape their messages, someone else will do it for them.

“…it’s through language that we create the world, because it is nothing until we describe it. And when we describe it, we create distinctions that govern our actions. To put it another way, we do not describe the world we see, but we see the world we describe.” – Joseph Jaworski, Synchronicity: the Inner Path of Leadership

•Build bridges and not walls. Leaders are in the business of building bridged to the future, this require the breaking down of walls! Change will always require the destruction of walls and the building of bridges. One of the best ways to do this in conversation is to replace “Yes, but . . .” and instead say “Yes, and . . .” When someone says something you disagree with, don’t make them wrong with “Yes, but I don’t agree with you” Rather, help them understand that you you have a different point of view “Yes, and in my experience there is another way of understanding that situation.”

•Leaders selectively involve influential people in meaningful conversations. When seeking to bring about change, leaders involve influential people to help shape the message and allow them to take the necessary action to bring the message to life. This involves a very conscious choice of people, and of process that’s convened to manage the organisations the conversation. Conversation taps into our head and hearts, it taps our mind and our emotions. Inspire influential people and they will take your message to others, sparking further conversation.

•Keep the conversation focused on a few key themes. Focus the organisations attention on a few key themes, the essential drivers of performance and shapers of behaviour. Concentrate the key themes on what really matters. These themes must be simple enough to communicate effectively and be understood. They should be repeated over and over, be managed and measured so that they lead to action. Key themes need to be framed so that they capture the imagination and inspire further conversation.

Considering the above principles, how effectively are you leading your organisations conversation?

“Leaders live in fish bowl and are always being watched. They should always be conscious of that fact and take advantage of it.” – Gene Klann

Leaders are being watched all the time. Every gesture, action and word is being closely observed. In a New York Times article, “He Wants Subjects, Verbs and Objects” based on an interview with Richard Anderson, chief executive of Delta Air Lines, makes the following point:

“I’ve learned to be patient and not lose my temper. And the reason that’s important is everything you do is an example, and people look at everything you do and take a signal from everything you do. And when you lose your temper, it really squelches debate and sends the wrong signal about how you want your organization to run. And it was a good lesson.”

Everything you do is an example. Leaders are closely watched all the time. You are not only being closely observed, your actions are being assessed and people are making judgements. Judgements about..

What is the right way to behave around here?
What are the acceptable ways of getting things done?
What topics and ideas are ok to share and talk about? What ones are not ok?
How do decisions get made?
You get the idea. This means that leaders must act with integrity at all the times. As person of integrity you do way you say and say what you do. You are a living example of how things ought to be done. This means leaders do the right thing even when they are not being watched!

“Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo… As a leader, you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.” – Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

Leaders are future focused, future looking and have a vision of where they want to be. Leaders have a strong sense of direction with a clear point of view. Unless the has a string sense leader of where they are going, people will be reluctant to follow. Leaders look towards the future, plotting a course to a new land, leaders are modern explorers, seeking new lands and striving for distant shores. Kouzes and Posner in their their classic book, “The Leadership Challenge” see leaders as pioneers.

“Leaders are pioneers. They are people who venture into unexplored territory. They guide us to new and often unfamiliar destinations. People who take the lead are the foot soldiers in the campaigns for change… The unique reason for having leaders – their differentiating function – is to move us forward. Leaders get us going someplace.”

Leaders deal in the future, they have a future focus that acts as a signpost, a touch stone that point the way, giving others the confidence to follow, to make sacrifices and to take bold steps forward.

A boss creates fear, a leader confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting. ~Russell H. Ewing

Why is confrontation so difficult? We often misunderstand its purpose. Our goal among brothers should not be to punish or excommunicate, but to restore. Confrontation is a redemptive act of leadership. So what are the goals of healthy confrontation?

Clarification - I will get a better understanding of the person and what happened.
Change - I hope to get improvement from it. And it may be me!
Relationship - I will likely deepen my relationship with this person.
Purity - As word gets out, the organization will be purified and sobered.
Respect - The organization will likely raise the members' level of respect for the leadership.
Security - People feel safe knowing leaders are strong enough to take a stand.

Leadership is both an art and a science and effective leadership requires that we embrace both perspectives.

The science of leadership concerns the observation and study of leadership principles and practices, resulting in a reliable explanation of what makes leaders effective. Volumes of research, opinions and books have been written on scientific leadership methods and practices.

The art is about developing practical experience in the application of the leadership practices and methods resulting from the “science of leadership”. The art of leadership is about learning to apply leadership practices creatively to achieve success.

Artists learn everything they can about the medium(s) with which they work, what they can expect from it and where it will fall short. A potter, for example, must learn that clay has its own life, its own potential and limits, its own integrity. The potter develops a relationship with clay, spending time with it, learning to know its properties, how it will interact with water, discovering that if you work it too hard, it will collapse, and if you work with it, it will teach you its strength, your limits, and the possibilities of co-creation.

Leadership is an art, it requires creativity in application and a science, it depends on specific principles and practices. Leadership is an art in that it requires the leader to be sensitive to situations and circumstances and skill to influence other to take action to bring about change.

The practices and methods that comprise the leadership science, requires relentless practice and on-going experimentation, until they become part of the leader, “an extension of their arm”.

Consider the following:

Do you understand the science of leadership?
What leadership practices and methods are you learning to apply to your leadership canvas this week?
What leadership principles and practices can you creatively apply this week?
Practice is the only way that you will ever come to understand what the Way of the warrior is about . . . Words can only bring you to the foot of the path . . .” – Musashi from “Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business“

I first came across the idea of a personal growth plan in John Maxwell’s book “The Success Journey: The Process of Living Your Dreams “. A personal growth plan is built upon the belief that personal development is our responsibility and as such we need to intentionally plan our growth. The idea is to have a plan that outlines the areas in our lives that require personal development. I have used a personal growth plan for a while and found it a useful tool that keeps me focused. If I’m not careful, distractions from media, e-mail, blogs and work pressures keep me from using my time wisely. In all the noise, I forget the personal development goals I set myself. Here are the five steps we need to take to develop a personal growth plan:

•Identify the few key areas in your life that you would like to develop. Looking at your dreams, goals and personal aspirations, what are the five (plus or minus two) key areas in your life that you need to develop? What are those few key competencies that will have the greatest impact on your life, career or goals?

•Look for resources in these areas. List the resources that you may need to assist you in developing in each of the areas you’ve identified. This may include books, blogs, tapes, seminars or training to attend. Also include a list of resources that you are going to investigate to help you in your personal growth.

•Set aside an hour a day dedicated to your personal development. You will need to create an hour each day to implement your growth plan. This is a regular time set aside to focus on developing the areas identified, used for reading, writing and reflecting.

•Find mentors and build relationships with other growing people. This is one of the most under-valued areas of personal development. Relationships with growing people, will help you to grow more quickly than any other resource I know. Look for mentors to support and guide you in each of the key areas identified, multiple mentors are usually better than one, as it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find a one person able to assist you in all your key areas.

•As you develop the areas you identified find a way to apply what you learn. Learning is only retained and made meaningful through application. New behaviours create new results, whereas new knowledge only increases your pride. Your life needs to change as a result of what you’ve learnt and this requires action and learning.

John Maxwell suggests that when you learn something new that you ask yourself the following three questions:
Where can I use it?
When can I use it?
Who else needs to know it?
Develop your personal growth plan, make it a visual poster and hang it up where you can see it daily. Then create a daily habit of spending an hour dedicated to your reaching personal development goals.

For sustainability in today's economy we have to change the culture from one in which people simply do their own job in their own function to make their own numbers look good to one in which people are focused horizontally on the customer and on improving value streams that deliver value across functions.

Changing a culture is not as easy as instituting a training or communication program. Culture evolve slowly, and changing them is even slower. 

Without the constant vigilance and dedication of managers and workers alike, without leadership, backsliding is common and rapid. Backsliding is a analogous to the months of discipline, dieting, and self-denial required for a person to lose 10kg, only to gain it all back again in cocktails and desserts during holiday binge.

Like most people who go on diets, most companies that go lean fool themselves into thinking that the change effort is a time-bounded exercise. The company just needs to eat less and exercise more for now. It doesn't understand that if it is to stay lean, a company, like a person, has to live lean.. forever. It is literally about resetting the corporate metabolism, even restructuring its DNA. 

That cannot be done just by shifting a process, implementing a methodology, or running a change program. Real systemic change has to happen at a company's core, with its people. Most critical it needs to be embodied in the company's leaders.

Leaders, and the leadership model that the company cultivates, are the root drivers of a companies successful engagement of team members throughout the company, not the cause. 

Great leaders strive for continuous improvements in every aspect of the business, and achieving that improvement requires everyone, from top executives to the heads of small work groups on the floor, to work together, in every division, and at every managerial position up and down the ladder. In other words, this is the type of leadership that can never be provided by a few stars with extraordinary ability or stunning charisma.

Perhaps the biggest single barrier to building a viable culture of continuous improvement is the ROI mentality. When short term cost reduction becomes the single focus, trumping any investment in the future that does not have an immediate and calculable ROI - Such as training, creating a robust learning system, developing exceptional leaders, and funding long term R&D. Focusing on the ROI for each individual step is like the person who lives for immediate gratification and will not make any investment in his future.

If your worldview involves seeing organizations as machines, then you are likely to view people in terms of the functions that they perform. In practice, this translates into hierarchical structure, in which educated specialists decide how the company should operate and how each process should be designed; managers make sure that those designs are followed to the letter, guided by targets and metrics; and workers do the work, with no room to make suggestions for improvement. Within such world, workers are viewed as mindless automatons and managers bureaucrats who enforce the rules without variation. The specialists, and the specialists only, are encouraged to think.

It has today become so completely the norm within business environments that people dont even see it.

To be successful we need to change our thought process and look at organizations as living organisms. We need to challenge the the traditional assumptions such as the only way for managers to motivate people is to externally control them. Using metrics, along with reward systems based on those metrics, allows you to control workers. Another assumption is that success is based on a set of replicable actions that are transferable one-to-one to another environment. These two assumptions are looking at people as cogs in the organization and not part of the organism. 

We need to avoid tying specific rewards to specific metrics. The problem with this is people will narrow their focus on what is measurable and ignore other parts of the job such as quality and/or customer service. A company should be as concerned about the thinking behind the groups plans for achieving the objective as it is about whether the result is achieved. Metrics-based incentives drive individualistic behavior rather than a team orientation.

In many companies their is a fundamental disconnect between labor and managers. The root cause of this disconnect is that management is trying to maximize workers output by using imposed rules and control systems. Unless labor-management relations are built on trust and cooperation towards common goals, attempts to change are fruitless.

The person who works everyday interacting with the customer adds a huge amount of value to the customers, the manager does not, except indirectly. The leaders mission is to put the right team with the right skills in place to win, that is, to add customer value. The leader does not interact with the customer but coaches and supports the team members. The leader keeps the team focused on the goals and objectives at hand. Only a exceptional leader can channel the combined efforts of the team members and the work groups effectively to achieve larger goals.

If their was a formula for success, it is a deep, time-consuming investment in developing everyone in the organization, and truly believing that your employees are the most precious resource. The role of the leader in this context is to be open to the kind of self-development needed to cultivate her own leadership skills, develop subordinates so that they grow and improve, remove obstacles and set challenges and goals so that teams at all levels of the organization can contribute to the companies continuous improvement and attainment of its long-term goals.

Growth is essential to your satisfaction and your success, but it doesn't just happen. It requires intentionality. And a desire to expand beyond your current capacity.

•It's Hard to Improve When You Have No One But Yourself to Follow
•You Must See Value in Yourself to Add Value to Yourself
•Growth Stops When You Lose the Tension Between Where You Are and Where You Could Be
•Developing Yourself Enables You to Develop Others

Senior management is simply a flag bearer when a business decision is made. It is of no use unless others follow the flag.

It's been said that our potential is God's gift to us, and what we do with it is our gift to Him. But our potential is probably our greatest untapped resource. Why? We can do anything, but we can't do everything. Many people never really dedicate themselves to their purpose in life. They become a jack of all trades, master of none - rather than a jack of few trades, focused on one.

Here are four principles to put you on the road to growing toward your potential:

1. Concentrate on one main goal. Nobody ever reached their potential by scattering themselves in twenty directions. Reaching your potential requires focus.

2. Concentrate on continual improvement. Commitment to continual improvement is the key to reaching our potential. Each day you can become a little bit better than you were yesterday.

3. "We can't gain any momentum moving toward tomorrow if we are dragging the past behind us." Maybe you've made a lot of mistakes in your life, or you've had an especially difficult past. Work your way through it and move on.

4. Focus on the future. You can become better tomorrow than you are today. As the Spanish proverb says, "He who does not look ahead remains behind."

Today, your performance review is based on things like sales numbers or number of goals met. Tomorrow, though, it could be based on something that until now has remained ephemeral: organizational influence.

Already companies are using influence to help them run more smoothly. 

For example, when companies have a new system to roll out, they'll look up who the most influential people are in various departments and bring them in for a briefing ahead of time, in the hopes they'll be able to evangelize the system to their peers.

The most progressive organizations have always realized that the informal connections employees make with others and the amount of knowledge and expertise they share outside of prescribed work responsibilities contributes mightily to the bottom line. But until now, they haven't had an empirical way of measuring that activity.