Leadership is a process of innovating and instigating. It is all about creativeness, adaptiveness, and responsive. Leadership appears at the sphere, not just the end result.
Leaders stand their vision, their stipulation to others, and their veracity on realism, on the specifics, on a careful estimate of the forces on the trends. They widen the means for varying the original balance of forces so that employees can recognize their vision.
A leader is an important person who could form a persuasive vision that takes people to a new place, and to interpret that vision into action. Leaders illustrate other people to them by joining them in their vision. What leaders do is motivate people, empower them. They pull moderately than push. Leadership attracts and rejuvenates people to enroll in a vision of the future. It stimulates people by helping them identify with the task and the goal to some extent than by satisfying or grueling them.
Leaders are primarily the results leaning inpiduals in the world, and results get consideration. Their visions or objectives are persuasive and drag people toward them. Intensity coupled with obligation is alluring. These strong personalities do not have to force people to focus on; they are so intent on what they are doing that, like a child totally fascinated with creating a sand castle in a sandbox, they depict others in.
Visions seem to get confidence on the part of employees, self-confidence that is a belief that they are competent of performing to their full prospective. Edwin H. Land, founder of Polaroid, said: “The first thing you naturally do is teach the person to feel that the undertaking is manifestly important and nearly impossible. . . . That draws out the kind of drive that makes people strong that put you in pursuit intellectually.”
All leaders can form a persuasive vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then interprets that vision into truth. Peter Drucker said that the first mission of a leader is to describe the vision.
Max DePree , CEO of Herman Miller, wrote in Leadership Is an Art, “The first responsibility of a leader is to describe reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.” (Warren G. Bennis, Joan Goldsmith, 1997)
Primarily Vision grabs the leader, and the capability to communicate it eventually eases others also to get on the bandwagon. Warren Bennis visited Ray Kroc at “Hamburger U” in Elk Grove, Illinois, near Chicago, where McDonald’s employees can get a “Bachelor of hamburgerology with a minor in French fries.” Kroc spoke of his first vision. He was already an extremely successful paper-cup manufacturer when he began manufacturing milkshake machines. He met the McDonald brothers, who owned a chain of milkshake parlors, and that collision of cups and shakes set off the spark a phenomenon we now know as McDonald’s. When asked what leads to such serendipitous notions, Kroc answered:
I cannot pretend to know what it is. Certainly it is not some great vision. Maybe it is a blend of your background, your natures and your dreams. Whatever it was at that instant, I suppose I became an entrepreneur and decided to go for broke. (Warren G. Bennis, Joan Goldsmith, 1997)
Sergio Comissioná, the renowned conductor, when he was with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. For a long time he rejected to be interviewed, which was noteworthy by itself. He would not react to letters; he would not react to phone calls. Following many months Warren was capable to get in a tune with two of his musicians. While asked what Commission was like, they answered, “Terrific.” Although when asked why, they wavered. Finally they said, “Because he does not waste our time.” (Warren G. Bennis, Joan Goldsmith, 1997)
In case of IHOP, Having all levels of the organization’s leadership responsible for attainment of these objectives is just as significant, starting with top leadership, which should lead by example. Accountability entails the need to have measurable ways to check on the progress. Like any other plan undertaken in the organization, once top leadership is committed to the role of leadership development in attaining organizational results, a thorough need’s analysis should be conducted to establish what the specific goals and objectives are for leadership development in support of the organizational vision and expected consequences.
Leadership development should be viewed as a key element in the achievement of the organization’s visions and attainment of expected results. It is the role of leadership development to make this connection as a part of the organization’s commitment to its vision and thus to leadership development. Those who responsible for leadership development must always be attentive to ensuring that leadership development are part of the overall organizational strategy and vision.
References:
Warren G. Bennis, Joan Goldsmith; Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader, Perseus Books (Current Publisher: Perseus Publishing), 1997