1. Great leaders exhibit great calm – Truly powerful people have an air of calm about them. This helps those around them act more rationally and be more successful pushing the organization through difficult times. Exhibit calmness at all times. It will become your nature.

2. Recognize that there is always more time than it seems - Too many mistakes are made by those bosses who think that decisions need to be made quickly every time. It can be tough for a younger leader to buy, but it’s usually true that “this too will pass.” Don’t get stampeded into a bad decision.

3. Focus on the real world - It’s true that many leaders are far too convinced that they know what’s right every time. They ignore reports and analyses, dismissing them as missing the mark in this particular situation. Accept this: nothing offsets the value of solid data and hard research.

4. Highly Charged = Highly Questionable - Bosses who shout, cry, whine, or are too focused on feelings are a turn-off to those above who can help them succeed. And no one below wants to spend time with a supervisor who can’t be level-headed in difficult times.
Show the each of these groups that you can take the bad news as well as the good. Everyone appreciates working with someone who is even-keeled.

5. Even a weak leader can look good with a great team – Surround yourself with people who know more than you. Give them full credit for their ideas, pay them well, and build loyalty. Everyone I’ve every worked with knows this is true, but for a lot of reasons (pressure from above, misplaced loyalty, their own ego problems) they don’t surround themselves with the best available talent. And then they fail.

Using these strategies you will become a better leader. If using them doesn’t feel “authentic” don’t let that trouble you. That feeling is probably because they’re not a natural part of your skills repertoire. This is normal. To deal with it,

Have you ever worked with a person who always says yes but never delivers what you need? Many of us have felt the frustration of that scenario, so it’s exciting to work with somebody who takes the time to understand a problem while also asking the key questions to ensure that all expectations are met.

#2: Being energetic

Employees with energy tend to lift up the people around them. Leaders sometimes need to be able to boost a team when they are working on tough projects, and having this trait can make a big difference in the long run.

#3: Remaining calm under pressure

When big problems happen, teams look to their leaders for direction. When a leader isn’t available, who else do they turn to for guidance and decisions? Usually it’s the person who has kept his or her cool and has been trying to find a solution to the problem. Nobody wants to work with the guy who is yelling, “The sky is falling!” But they will be happy to work with somebody who can see the light at the end of the tunnel when nobody else can.

#4: Taking responsibility for their actions

We all make mistakes. Many of us know it way before our bosses find out. Leaders are always willing to admit to making a mistake when something doesn’t work out as they planned. Usually, they are also trying to learn from the problem to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.

#5: Acknowledging the contribution of others

How often do your team members celebrate each others’ successes? Since the business world can be pretty competitive, it’s difficult for us to see somebody else do well and not be concerned about how it affects us. Leaders learn early on that many of their achievements come on the heels of their team’s successes and the contributions of each individual. Understanding this and feeling comfortable with it early in their career is a powerful trait.

#6: Being comfortable outside their area of expertise

Developers may be good at solving problems with applications and hardware, but can they effectively gather user requirements? How about dealing with end users or managing a budget? As leaders mature, they realize that they are asked to be involved with projects and teams of all shapes and sizes. The ability to feel comfortable in a situation while not being the expert gets easier when they realize that they can always fall back on their leadership skills no matter what the topic. After all, they were asked to get involved because someone thought they would add value.

#7: Being willing to take risks

Do you have someone on your team who’s afraid of making a decision or taking any type of risk? Or maybe they aren’t afraid to make choices, but only when they’re confident that the risk factor is small. This will be a problem if they get into a leadership role. Taking calculated and educated risks are daily events in the world of management and leadership.

#8: Being able to convince others

Do you have somebody on your team whom people look up to? Or is there somebody the business likes to work with because that person makes them feel comfortable when discussing tech issues? Make sure you keep an eye out for those people. The ability to influence others and direct a project without actual authority is a great indicator that you have a solid leadership candidate on your team.

#9: Being comfortable reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses

Leaders always need to look forward and many times backward to try to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Most people like to get praise, but how do they deal with constructive criticism? Look for those who are comfortable taking time to reflect on their style and actions and how that influences those around them.

#10: Being able to adapt

Things are constantly changing in business today. Technical people who work best with a fixed roadmap will struggle in a role that has ever-changing priorities. Leaders need to the ability to adapt to their surroundings as well as to the needs of the company.

Remember that not everybody is ready (or willing) to be a leader. Plenty of techs are more than happy to stay involved in the nuts and bolts of a project or to just sit back and develop robust applications. But IT organizations need some type of leadership structure to help guide the department and to interface at different levels within the organization. While it’s not common to hear about senior technical managers being good organizational leaders, it does happen. The early identification of individuals who have some of the above-mentioned attributes allows current leadership to groom those people for the future — an important step in making a company effective and successful.

This task is named “Rabbit, Archer or Wall”

- In this there are two teams.

- Each team has to choose the character they want to be they can either be Rabbit or Archer or Wall

- All the team members have to be same character, so the character has to be told to everyone in the team. The team here decides what they want to be.

- Both teams are given 30 seconds to decide who they are.

- After 30 seconds both team face each other and do the respective action.

- For Rabbit action is “Hands on ear”, for Archer the action is “Archer releasing arrow”, and for Wall the action is both Hands with the palm facing the other team.

- When Rabbit comes in front of Archer – Archer wins (Archer kills Rabbit)

- When Rabbit comes in front of Wall – Rabbit wins (Rabbit jumps over Wall)

- When Wall comes in front of Archer – Wall wins (Wall falls on Archer)

In this you can have 5 iterations which yields you the result.

Things team learn in this task,

- Communicating the character (action) to all the members.

- Improved co-ordination among team members as all the members are told to do the same action.

- Improved understanding among team members.

- Chance for team members to place their opinion, get togerther and discuss what action to perform.

- Improves teamwork and team comes together to achieve success and win.

I’ll post the other two exercises that we had very soon. Keep checking.

Njoy

When you manage salaried knowledge workers, you should almost never have rigid clock-in/clock-out times unless there is a coverage issue in relation to serving customers (e.g., maintaining adequate help desk coverage during call hours). Instead, set clear goals that you know should take your employees about 40 hours/week to accomplish. Require that they show up on time for important meetings and are available during the team’s general working hours. Provide them with the tools to access their work remotely, when needed. Then let them manage their own time. This sends the message that you trust your employees. If you’ve got people you don’t trust, that’s another issue. Manage them up until you do trust them or manage them out to their next opportunity.

#2: Align people with the stuff they are good at

Make sure you have the right people in the right seats. This is especially true if you take over the management of a team that is already in place. Take stock of all the talents you have on the team and reshuffle the deck if it means that your team has a better chance of success. Don’t keep someone in a job role just because they’ve been doing it for long time if you truly think their talents are better suited and could make a bigger contribution in another role. Employees might be reluctant to move in a case like this, so you may need to work hard to convince them that the change is in their best interest, as well as the best interest of the company.

#3: Align people with the projects they are passionate about

Another part of getting people in the right seats is finding what your employees are genuinely passionate about and seeing if they are ways to align them with job roles that let them channel some of that passion. Occasionally, that can mean putting someone in an area where they don’t have much experience. But if their previous work history makes you think they can succeed in that role, it’s usually worth it because their passion will fuel a strong desire to learn and grow. Once they’re up to speed, that passion can become a strong driver of innovation and growth.

#4: Put your best performers on your biggest opportunities

When you have a big opportunity that could propel your organization forward, you need to step back and think about who is the best person to lead the charge. In addition to finding someone who has the talent for the work involved or who has a passion for the subject matter, you need to look at who has a track record of success. Big opportunities come around only once in a while, and they can be lost. So even if it means taking someone off something important, you should always put your best performers on your biggest opportunities.

#5: Find the balance between aggressive and realistic goals

Create a culture of performance by setting aggressive goals and holding your employees accountable for regularly reporting on their progress. However, the goals can’t be so aggressive that your employees quickly fall behind and feel like they can never realistically achieve them. Otherwise, they will quit stretching to reach the goals. That means that you have to regularly re-evaluate the goals (at least on a quarterly basis) to decide whether they need to be scaled down or scaled up.

#6: Trust your people — and let them know it

Knowledge workers typically have jobs that require creative solutions and decision-making. They need to stay sharp mentally to achieve top performance. The onus is on management to create an atmosphere that fosters and encourages that kind of creativity. One of the best things you can do is to let your employees know that you trust them and that you have faith in their ability to do the job, solve the problem, and/or meet the deadline. If you don’t trust them, again, you need to manage them up or manage them out.

#7: Avoid blame (a.k.a. throwing people under the bus)

In any business (or organizational enterprise), there are going to be times when you fail, and there will be things that simply don’t pan out the way you had hoped. Do a post-mortem (even if it’s informal) to figure out what went wrong and learn from it. If there were egregious errors made by individuals, deal with them privately. If necessary, let the person know your expectations for how this should be handled in the future. Don’t publicly blame individuals — either directly or indirectly — in meetings or team e-mails. If you do, you risk creating an atmosphere in which people are so afraid to make mistakes that they don’t spend enough time doing the proactive and creative work necessary to avoid future problems — or more important, to drive new innovations.

#8: Foster innovation by killing projects the right way

Another important part of fostering innovation is knowing how to kill projects effectively and gracefully. There are times when failed initiatives will expose the weaknesses of certain employees, but there are plenty of times when you have good employees working on projects that simply don’t pan out. Figuring out the difference between those two scenarios is part of becoming a good manager. If it’s a good person on a bad project, the person who was running the project isn’t any less talented because the project didn’t materialize. So make sure you use the project as a learning experience and reassign the person to something new without excessive hand-wringing. Otherwise, you will make your employees overly risk-averse, and they will be reluctant to jump into the next big project or to make bold moves when managing the project. That type of atmosphere can quickly stifle progress.

#9: Don’t provide all the answers — make your employees think

You are the manager. You are the leader. That does not mean that you have a monopoly on all of the good ideas. If your employees are hesitant to make decisions without asking your opinion first, you haven’t properly empowered them. If your employees aren’t making enough of their own decisions, you should change your tactics. When they present you with information and ask what to do about a situation, push the ball back into their court and ask them, “What do you think?” They might be surprised at first, but after you do that several times, they’ll start thinking it through before they come to you so that they’re fully prepared to discuss the matter and make a recommendation. That’s a good thing, because they’re usually closer to the customer and more familiar with the details of the work. You need their opinions. And you need them to make some of their own decisions.

#10: Build consensus by letting people know “why”

One of your key responsibilities in management is communicating about new initiatives and strategy changes. The worst thing you can do is surprise your staff members with a fully formed idea about a new way to do something that will drastically alter their day-to-day work. When you spring it on them, people will naturally be defensive and skeptical. Whenever possible, give people an informal heads-up that a change is coming and let them know some of the reasoning involved. They will be glad you kept them in the loop. If they don’t agree with the reasoning, they can express their dissent. They might even bring up a caveat or a gotcha that should be considered before the final plan is solidified. An even better course of action is to have a brainstorming session with your team when you are still formulating a new idea or strategy change, so you can gather their ideas and feedback. You may sometimes have to spring something on your team, but make sure that you limit those occasions. Even then, take the time to let them know the reasoning behind the decision.

Resource: Techrepublic.com

If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make it your aim.

If you think you’re incapable of running a company, make that your aim.

If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make it your business to be there.

Make your vision of where you want to be a reality.

Nothing is impossible.

Quite good.

Good.

Very Good.

The best in our field.

Or the best in the world?

Talent helps, but it won’t take you as far as ambition. Everybody wants to be good, but not many are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to be great.

To many people, being nice in order to be liked is more important. There’s equal merit in that, but you must not confuse being good with being liked.

Most people are looking for a solution, a way to become good. There is no instant solution, the only way to learn is through experience and mistakes.

You will become whoever you want to be.

- We always end up setting outcome goals instead of performance goals. For instance, you might set a goal of achieving 80% in your exam. This is an outcome goal. Instead you need to set a goal, which is performance oriented. For example, trying your best to achieve 80%. The outcome may often not be in your hands, but our performance most definitely is. Fail to achieve goals for reasons outside your control can be very dispiriting and may lead to loss of enthusiasm and feelings of failure.

- Goals can be unrealistically high. When a goal is perceived to be unreachable, no effort will be made to achieve it. Set realistic goals. For example, if an average student sets a goal of achieving 90%, it is very unlikely that he will be able to achieve this goal.

- Conversely, goal can be set so low that you feel no challenge in achieving it, making the goal a waste of time. Always set goals that are challenging. For instance, many students aim to get only passing marks, when in fact, they have the capacity of doing much better.

- At times, goals can be so vague that they are useless: It is difficult to know whether vague goals have been achieved. If achievement cannot be measured, then your self-confidence will not benefit from goal setting, nor can you observe progress towards a greater goal. Therefore, set precise quantitative goal. A common example is “doing better” in the exam. We must specify or define what the child means by “doing better”. Why do you think most schools have four exams in a year? One reason is to help the students know where they stand, so that they can set goals accordingly as well as measure their achievement.

- Goal setting can be unsystematic. Here goals will be forgotten, achievement of goals will not be measured and feedback will not occur into new goals. The major benefits of goal settings have been lost. Be organized and regular in the way that you use goal setting.

- Setting too many unprioritized goals can lead to feeling of overload. Remember, we all deserve time to relax and enjoy. Go one step at a time and set the next goal only after the first have been achieved.

By avoiding these problems and setting goals effectively, you can achieve and maintain strong forward momentum.

You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper. It is the same at work, people are secretive with ideas. ‘Don’t tell them that, they’ll take the credit for it.’

The problem with hoarding is you end up living off your reserves. Eventually you’ll become stale. If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.