توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Leadership -AJ

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary about the topic of leadership. So this is a big topic. It’s kind of like the topic of management in that there are probably millions of books written about this subject of leadership and what it is and how do you do it and how do you learn the skills, what makes a great leader and what makes a not good leader. This is endlessly analyzed and debated, etc., so get out there and read a lot of books on the subject because there’s plenty to learn.

At a basic level when I think of leadership, I think of it as a very emotional thing. That’s how in my mind I especially differentiate it, meaning how I see it as different from management. Management can be, not always, but it can be a kind of very logical, rational, analytical kind of profession. In other words, you can be very analytical and very specific in management. You can say these are the exact goals we want and things can be very measurable.

Management certainly requires some analytical ability. Leadership can too, but I tend to think of leadership as being more about the emotions and the psychology. While you have managers managing all the key tasks and the key goals that need to happen, leaders are kind of the big picture people. They’re focused on things like inspiration, motivation, vision, direction; all of those kinds of things. Essentially, they’re focused on psychology and emotion because the big, big job of leaders is to get an entire organization, an entire group of people to be focused on and inspired by a mission and a direction, to get everyone going in the right direction.

I’ll use sports as an example, again, because it’s just such a clear and useful example.

So at the management level of sports you might be focused on teaching and perfecting certain techniques, actual techniques. You might be focused on, also, certain plays, certain ways of working together, certain strategies for beating the team, but at a leadership level it tends to be more deep, more emotional, more human.

At a leadership level the leader is trying to inspire the players to give all of their energy, to give all of the effort 100%, to not give up. Even when things seem hopeless and difficult to keep fighting and fighting, to have a vision and a goal together as a team and to bring the team together so that they’re connected to each other and they care about each other. These are the kind of things I think about that leaders focus on.

As a leader you really need to understand psychology and you really need to understand the emotions of people who are working with you or for you and, of course, psychology, emotions, these are not exact sciences. These are more of an art than a science. That’s why I think that leadership can seem like a difficult subject because it’s hard to clearly figure out exactly what makes a great leader.

Great leaders have many different styles. Some of them are very loud and energetic.

Their personalities are very outgoing. There are other leaders who are very, very effective and powerful who are more quiet, more reserved, but they still have something, some kind of power, some kind of charisma that causes people to follow them, believe in them and want to join them in their mission and their vision.

So in that sense it’s difficult to figure out, but there are certain kind of key traits, key abilities that all leaders possess and they can be learned. So leadership is not something you’re born with. I think my dad mentioned that and I agree. It’s something that you can develop yourself.

Of course, persuasiveness is one of the big ones, the ability to persuade people especially with speech. Persuasive writing is great also, but I think most leaders are able to persuade people face to face or with their voice, with their speaking, so an ability to be a really powerful speaker, confident certainly, but also persuasive.

Knowing how to sell, I think leaders tend to be great salespeople. They’re typically selling ideas rather products, but still they know how to sell ideas. They know how to get other people excited about an idea or a purpose or a goal. So that persuasiveness, that persuasive speaking especially, that’s an important component of leadership.

Confidence is a big one. I think great leaders are almost always confident. They at least appear confident. They may have their doubts in their private moments, but when they’re performing, when they’re dealing with their group, their team, their company, whatever, they radiate confidence. They appear confident. They speak confidently.

Everything seems almost super confident, beyond normal, well beyond normal.

If you look at people like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson we mentioned, Jack Welch who used to lead GE, I mean these guys are super, super, super confident people. Even if their have failures or mistakes they just keep going and going and going. They never quit. They just have a huge confidence in themselves and they typically have a very deep confidence and a deep commitment to their teams or their companies. That feeling, that emotion, people can feel it. It’s part of their charisma. So confidence, deep confidence, again, that’s something that can be developed.

Part of what gives them their persuasiveness, part of what gives them their confidence, is this feeling or sense of mission, of having a really big purpose that is important, that is inspiring to them. Because they are so passionate about the purpose or the mission, because they are evangelical about it, they can convince other people to join it to.

People feel that emotion and they’re convinced by it.

Enthusiasm is contagious --we say this, this is kind of a saying in English --contagious, like a disease. It means it can spread from one person to another very quickly and easily and it’s true. If you’re around someone who is just really excited about something it’s easy for you also to get excited about it. You don’t even know why you’re getting excited. You just know that that person is so energetic, they’re so excited, they’re so focused, so enthusiastic, it gets you enthusiastic about it too.

Leaders are like this. They have some kind of vision for a bigger, better future. Maybe it’s just a bigger, stronger company or maybe it’s changing the world of computers or some other industry or maybe it’s serving people in a certain way. Whatever it is, it’s a big vision that involves making a change for the better, changing something for the better, improving something, making the company or even the world better. It tends to be a very large purpose and because it’s so large it requires a lot of passion and energy to achieve. Leaders have that and they communicate that constantly. That’s what gives them their energy. That’s what gives them that incredible motivation and passion that you can feel and that’s why people follow them.

I believe that people tend to follow great leaders because people want to be part of something bigger than just themselves. People kind of get tired of just doing their little job or just focused on their own life or their own ego. I think that people are inspired by something that’s bigger, a bigger contribution. It might be contributing to their team or their company so that together everybody improves and grows. It might be improving the world in some way. Whatever it is, people want that. It’s kind of a basic human need.

In fact, there’s a kind of psychology that’s called Human Needs Psychology and contribution is one of the six human needs according to those psychologists. So it’s a strong part of our psychology for human beings. Most human beings want that feeling of contributing, of helping other people, a team or a company, their family or society, their country or their religion, something.

People want to be part of something and feel that they are helping to make the world better or to make something better. It’s a basic human need and leaders really, really, really have this in a powerful way and they recruit people. They get people to join their mission who also share this feeling, share this need.

So I think that’s one of the deeper secrets of leadership and it is something you can develop. It takes time. You really have to think a lot about this, about what do you want to contribute, what is your mission in life, what is your purpose, how does your purpose fit your job or your company, how can they be combined or joined in some way. The more you can get that, the more you will develop your own sort of charisma and passion and persuasiveness.

I did this myself as an English teacher. It took me a while to figure that out, but I started figuring out my own person mission and I started then seeing how I could combine it with my job as an English teacher and when I did that my power as an English teacher really just exploded. My students could feel something change. Something was different and they began to kind of follow me and join me in a much more emotional and more passionate way.

You can do exactly the same thing. It requires a lot of though, really thinking deeply about your life, what you want to contribute, what’s meaningful to you and then when you figure that part out you have to connect some or all of it to your career. It’s worth the work through because when you do it and when you develop that you will start to develop your own leadership ability and that will truly help your career. That, maybe more than anything else, is what is going to push you forward, push you up the ladder if that’s your goal, to help you be much, much better in your job and be much more persuasive and to really contribute at a much higher level.

I hope you’ll develop your own leadership ability in whatever way you choose. So, good luck to you and I will see again next time. Bye-bye.

The End.