Sometimes people confuse leadership with power. Leaders are often portrayed as hard-driving, hardnosed, and headstrong. And many good leaders have those qualities to be sure.
But it takes both force and influence to lead others effectively. The two approaches complement each other and create a powerful, yet adaptable force for action. Good leadership always balances power and influence.
Let’s look more specifically at how leaders can balance these two approaches. For example, here’s how they can be both:
- Commanding and understanding—A leader must know how to take command and run a department or work group. At the same time he or she must be understanding and take the needs of each group member into account.
- Directing and consulting—Leaders need to be able to direct operations and activities, but they also need to consult those they lead and listen to their ideas and opinions.
- Ordering and asking—Leaders must know how to give orders when necessary. And they must recognize when it is more effective to ask for cooperation.
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Here are three more pairs of opposite approaches, and how leaders can balance them when wielding the power of leadership:
- Striving and yielding—Leaders need to strive for success, but they must also know when to go around a barrier rather than try to break through it.
- Strong and flexible—Like the best athletes, good leaders are both strong and flexible. Leaders must know when to stand firm and when to bend.
- Controlling and influencing—Sometimes leaders need to be controlling and sometimes they must rely on influence. They have to be able to control situations and groups, but they also need to know how to influence, facilitate, and work from within the group—or even from behind the scenes.
Think about the way your managers and supervisors lead employees. Do they balance their power over employees with influence, persuasion, and guidance? Do they “boss” employees or do they work with them, facilitating and empowering them?
How can you go about training your leaders to more effectively balance the power of their leadership? It’s never easy to find the time or the money, but leadership training has a tremendous ROI value for employers.
The Leadership Library provides you with a sensible (and economic) solution.
The Leadership Library for Managers and Supervisors allows you to:
- Train on demand. Employees can complete training anytime from anywhere. All they need is a computer and an internet connection.
- Reinforce training topics with engaging graphics and quizzes to test their knowledge.
- Monitor and track the results of your training program with the built-in recordkeeping tool.
- Save costs. The more you train, the more cost-effective the training becomes.
The Leadership for Managers and Supervisors Library is a Web-based training tool that can be utilized by any organization. All you need is a computer and Internet access, and the library is open 24/7.
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The Leadership Training for Managers and Supervisors Library trains your managers on the fundamental skills required for successful team management and organizational communication.
The courses cover a range of leadership and managerial topics, including the following:
- Business Writing Skills for Supervisors
- Dealing with Change: How Supervisors Can Help
- Motivating Employees: Tips and Tactics for Supervisors
- Effective Communication for Supervisors
- Conflict Resolution and Consensus Building
- Workplace Ethics for Supervisors
- Encouraging Employee Input
- Negotiation Skills For Supervisors
- Time Management for Supervisors
- Professional Behavior: What Supervisors Need to Know
- Performance Goals for Supervisors
- New Supervisors’ Guide to Effective Supervision
- Problem Solving for Supervisors
- How to Manage Challenging Employees
- Coaching for Superior Employee Performance: Techniques for Supervisors
- Effective Meetings: How-to for Supervisors
- Leadership Skills: What New Managers and Supervisors Need to Know
This turnkey service requires no setup, no course development time, no software installation, and no new hardware. Your employees can self-register, and training can be taken anytime (24/7), anywhere there is a PC and an Internet connection. Courses take only about 30 minutes to complete.
Training Today automatically documents training. As trainees sign on, their identifications are automatically registered. When the program is completed, the trainee’s score is entered. So, when you want to see who has been trained on any subject, or look at the across-the-board activity of any one employee, it’s all there, instantly available.
Course certificates can be automatically generated from within the training center and are automatically retained for recordkeeping purposes.
Get started today on helping your managers and supervisors be the best they can be!