Table of Contents
100 Greatest Ideas … in an instant!
100 Greatest Ideas … 6 Great Books
Title Page
Copyright Page
Author’s Note
Preface
PART ONE - Understanding Leadership
Five Greatest Ideas for Understanding the Functions of Leadership
Idea 1: Task, team and individual
Idea 2: Leadership function – action-centred leadership
Idea 3: Leadership characteristics – task element
Idea 4: Leadership characteristics – team element
Idea 5: Leadership characteristics – individual element
Follow-up test
PART TWO - Performing as a Leader
Three Greatest Ideas for Setting and Achieving Your Objectives
Idea 6: Draw up a personal profile
Idea 7: Set personal goals
Idea 8: Set professional business goals
Nine Greatest Ideas for Leadership Skills
Idea 9: Defining the task
Idea 10: Planning
Idea 11: Briefing
Idea 12: Controlling
Idea 13: Evaluating
Idea 14: Supporting
Idea 15: Motivating
Idea 16: Setting an example
Idea 17: The Adair short course on leadership
Four Greatest Ideas for Leadership Qualities
Idea 18: The 25 attributes of leadership and management
Idea 19: The seven qualities of leadership
Idea 20: Leadership qualities test
Idea 21: Humility in action
Follow-up test
PART THREE - Power Through the People
Six Greatest Ideas for Teambuilding
Idea 22: Teambuilding – the functions of the leader
Idea 23: Achieving the task – with a team
Idea 24: Building the team
Idea 25: Developing the individual
Idea 26: The individual and teams
Idea 27: From good to great – hallmarks of a high-performance team
Sixteen Greatest Ideas for Getting the Best from Your Team
Idea 28: The 50:50 rule of motivation
Idea 29: Eight rules for motivating people
Idea 30: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Idea 31: McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y
Idea 32: Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory
Idea 33: Manager’s motivating checklist
Idea 34: Ten ways to strengthen your own motivation
Idea 35: The seven indicators of high motivation
Idea 36: Choosing people with motivation – the Michelangelo motive
Idea 37: The key to motivating – treat each person as an individual
Idea 38: Using Jacob’s ladder to set realistic and challenging targets
Idea 39: Giving feedback to reinforce and motivate
Idea 40: Maintaining morale to maintain motivation
Idea 41: Creating a motivating environment
Idea 42: Giving fair rewards to the motivated
Idea 43: Giving recognition to the motivated
Follow-up test
PART FOUR - Thinking as a Leader
Twelve Greatest Ideas for Decision Making
Idea 44: Refining your decision-making skills
Idea 45: The decision maker as effective thinker
Idea 46: The manager as decision maker
Idea 47: How to avoid the trap of bad compromise decisions
Idea 48: How to use analysis in decision making
Idea 49: The role of synthesis – a holistic approach – in decision making
Idea 50 – The role of imagination in decision making
Idea 51: The role of conceptual thinking in decision making
Idea 52: The role of intuition in decision making
Idea 53: The role of originality and innovation in decision making
Idea 54: The concept of value in decision making
Idea 55: How to weigh up the options in decision making
Thirteen Greatest Ideas for Creativity and Innovation
Idea 56: Seven obstacles to creativity
Idea 57: Ten things a creative person ought to be
Idea 58: Seven ways to stimulate creativity
Idea 59: The four main stages of creativity
Idea 60: The seven key players in innovation
Idea 61: How to recruit and retain creative people
Idea 62: How to encourage creativity
Idea 63: How communication can reinforce innovation
Idea 64: Overcoming obstacles to creativity and innovation
Idea 65: Making your organization good at innovation
Idea 66: Checklist for the innovative organization
Idea 67: Ways to generate ideas in an organization
Idea 68: Using brainstorming to generate ideas
Follow-up test
PART FIVE - The Challenge of Strategic Leadership
Five Greatest Ideas for the Role of Strategic Leader
Idea 69: Levels of leadership
Idea 70: The art of being a leaderinchief
Idea 71: Seven functions of strategic leadership
Idea 72: Seven useful skills for operational leaders
Idea 73: Practical wisdom
Seven Greatest Ideas for Strategic Leadership Skills
Idea 74: Giving direction
Idea 75: Strategic thinking and strategic planning
Idea 76: Making it happen
Idea 77: Relating the parts to the whole
Idea 78: Building partnerships
Idea 79: Releasing the corporate spirit
Idea 80: Developing today’s and tomorrow’s leaders
Followup test
PART SIX - Developing Your Personal Skills
Twelve Greatest Ideas for Effective Communication
Idea 81: 15 key issues in communication
Idea 82: Listening – a key element in communication
Idea 83: Being a better listener – developing listening skills
Idea 84: Six principles of effective speaking
Idea 85: Profiling the occasion – the first element of a good presentation
Idea 86: Planning and writing the presentation
Idea 87: How best to deliver your presentation on the day
Idea 88: Onetoone interviews
Idea 89: Appraising performance
Idea 90: Seven ways to receive criticism
Idea 91: Communication and the management of meetings
Idea 92: Communication within your organization
Eight Greatest Ideas for Managing Your Time
Idea 93: The ten principles of time management
Idea 94: Delegating effectively
Idea 95: Making use of committed time
Idea 96: Managing your health and avoid stress
Idea 97: Five techniques to keep interruptions brief
Idea 98: Six organizing ideas to improve time management
Idea 99: Making time to think
Idea 100: How to manage meetings
Followup test
About John Adair
Index
100 Greatest Ideas … in an instant!
Whether you’re a first time manager or an experienced leader, running a small team or an entire organization, straightforward, practical advice is hard to find.
John Adair’s 100 Greatest Ideas … are the building blocks for an amazing career, putting essential business skills and must-have thinking at your fingertips.
The ideas are short, punchy and clustered around themes, so you’ll find answers to all your questions quickly and easily. Everything you need to be simply brilliant is here, and it’s yours in an instant.
Look out for these at-a-glance features:
Personal Mantra –
Powerful statements as a source for inspiration
Ask Yourself –
Questions to get you thinking about the most information
Remind Yourself
Key points to help you reflect on the Ideas
Checklist –
A list of questions to help you put the Ideas into practice
100 Greatest Ideas … 6 Great Books
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Effective
Leadership
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Personal
Success
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Brilliant
Communication
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Smart Decision
Making
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Amazing
Creativity
John Adair’s 100 Greatest
Ideas for Being a Brilliant
Manager
Author’s Note
Effective business people have fine-tuned leadership and management ability backed up by exceptional decision-making, communication and creative skills and the know-how to implement it all successfully. These six areas are the basis of the 100 Greatest series.
None of these skills stands alone, each is interconnected, and for that reason I’ve revisited key ideas across the series. If you read more than one book, as I hope you will, you’ll meet key ideas more than once. These are the framework on which the series hang and the repetition will help you become a master of modern business.
Likewise, if you only read one book, the inclusion of key ideas from across the series means that you’ll benefit from seeing your chosen subject within the wider context of Leadership and Management excellence.
Good luck on your journey to becoming an effective manager within your organization.
John Adair
Preface
Listen to all, pluck a feather from every passing goose, but follow no one absolutely.
Chinese proverb
It is with great pleasure that I offer you my 100 Greatest Ideas on Effective Leadership. Please pluck as many feathers as you like from this collection and make them your own. I hope that they will enrich your personal effectiveness as a leader.
The basic units of the book are the Ideas, which are grouped together under themes and also divided into Parts. As you will see, the Ideas vary considerably. Some consist of just one simple idea. Others are more like ‘cluster bombs’: smaller ideas about an important element. Whatever their size or shape, they all have relevance to your journey of leadership.
This book takes a logical look at those issues that you have to get to grips with to perform well as a leader.
To be successful as a leader, you have to be well organized and disciplined; good at goal setting and focused on objectives; able to think creatively and make decisions; and able to communicate with other people.
The Ideas presented here are a distillation of my greatest tried-and-tested ideas in all these areas and will help you to function better as a leader or manager. You’ll be better able to get results through people and also to understand yourself and others.
The book does not debate at length the differences between being a manager and being a leader – the approach is rather the practical one that these greatest ideas will serve to improve your personal performance as both a manager and a leader.
In these pages I hope you will find inspiration to persevere until you achieve excellence as an effective leader.
John Adair
PART ONE
Understanding Leadership
My greatest discovery by far has been regarding what people now call the generic role of leader, the role that is common to all working groups and organizations anywhere in the world.
At the heart of that role lie the three overlapping core responsibilities of any leader: achieving the task, building and maintaining the team, and developing the individual.
This model implies an understanding of the environment in which you are working. In order to fulfil these responsibilities, you need to know your business, and you need to possess or develop the necessary qualities of personality, character and skills to provide the eight generic leadership functions: defining the task, planning, briefing, controlling, evaluating, supporting, motivating, and setting an example.
The three circles of leadership functions integrate together what we customarily call leadership and management, but these concepts do retain their own distinct overtones:
• Leading is about giving direction, especially in times of change; inspiring or motivating people to work willingly; building and maintaining teamwork; and providing an example, producing a personal output – or doing some of the work yourself.
• Managing is about running the business in ‘steady-state’ conditions; day-to-day administration; organizing structures and establishing systems; and controlling, especially by financial methods.
Both sets of skills and activities are essential. You have to be a manager-leader or a leader-manager, depending on your specific role and/or your level of responsibility in the organization.
‘Management is prose, leadership is poetry.’
Five Greatest Ideas for Understanding the Functions of Leadership
Idea 1: Task, team and individual
In leadership there are always three interacting elements or variables:
1. The leader: qualities of personality and character.
2. The situation: partly constant, partly varying.
3. The group: the followers, their needs and values.
It is helpful to look at leadership in relation to the needs of work groups. Work groups are always unique – they have their own group personality – but like individuals, they share needs in common:
1. Task need: to achieve the common task.
2. Team maintenance needs: to be held together or to be maintained as a team.
3. Individual needs: the needs that individuals bring with them into the group.
These three needs (the task, the team and the individual) are now the watchwords of leadership and people expect their leaders to:
• Help them achieve the common task.
• Build the synergy of teamwork.
• Respond to individuals and meet their needs.
Why needs? Working groups come into being because there is a task to be done that one person cannot do on their own. A pressure to accomplish it builds up. If the group is prevented from completing the task, it will experience frustration.
The other two needs are more below the surface. Groups are prone to fragmentation, and the forces that are holding them together – team maintenance – need to be stronger than the forces that are pushing them apart. The creation, promotion and retention of group/ organizational cohesiveness are essential, on the principle of ‘united we stand, divided we fall’.
The
individual needs are the physical ones (e.g. salary) and the more psychological ones of:
• Recognition.
• A sense of doing something worthwhile.
• Status.
• The deeper need to give and to receive from other people in a working situation.
Task, team and individual needs overlap, as in the diagram.
For example:
• Achieving the task builds the team and satisfies the individuals.
• If team maintenance fails (the team lacks cohesiveness), performance on the task is impaired and individual satisfaction is reduced.
• If individual needs are not met, the team will lack cohesiveness and performance of the task will be impaired.
When approaching business problems, issues or situations, do I always think: task, team and individual?
Idea 2: Leadership function – action-centred leadership
At whatever level of leadership you are, you must continually think about task, team and individual needs. To achieve the common task, maintain teamwork and satisfy individuals, certain functions have to be performed. A function is what leaders do as opposed to a quality, which is an aspect of what they are.
These functions (the
functional approach to leadership, also called
action-centred leadership) are:
• Defining the task: What are the purpose, aims and objectives? Why is this work worthwhile?
• Planning: A plan answers the question of how you are going to get from where you are now to where you want to be. There is nothing like a bad plan to break up a group or frustrate individuals.
• Briefing: The ability to communicate, to get across to people the task and the plan.
• Controlling: Making sure that all resources and energies are properly harnessed.
• Supporting: Setting and maintaining organizational and team values and standards.
• Motivating: Gaining the goodwill and wholehearted commitment of the team and each individual member.
• Evaluating: Establishing and applying the success criteria appropriate to the field.
• Setting an example: Leading from the front while exemplifying the qualities and behaviours expected in the team.
Leadership functions in relation to task, team and individual can be represented by the following diagram.
These leadership functions need to be completed with excellence. You achieve this by performing the functions with increasing skill and also by regularly reviewing and reflecting on your performance.
Before examining the skills of leadership, it is worth seeing which qualities of personality or character can be viewed as having functional value. These are traditionally called the qualities or characteristics of leadership. Again, they can be split into task, team and individual elements.
Idea 3: Leadership characteristics – task element
Before you can start to develop skills in leadership, you need to identify certain key qualities and typical outcomes that these qualities achieve when managing tasks.
The need | Quality | Functional value |
---|
Task | Initiative | Getting the group moving |
Perseverance | Preventing the group giving up |
Efficiency | Getting work done well, knowing costs (energy, time, money) |
Honesty | Establishing facts |
Self-confidence | Facing facts |
Industry | Reaping dividends through steady application |
Audacity | Not being restrained by rules or convention |
Humility | Facing up to mistakes and not blaming others |
How many of these qualities do I possess? How can I develop those I don’t and improve those I do?
Idea 4: Leadership characteristics – team element
These are the key qualities needed to build and run a team successfully:
The need | Quality | Functional value |
---|
Team | Integrity | Integrating the team and creating trust |
Humour | Relieving tension and maintaining a sense of proportion |
Audacity | Inspiring through originality or verve |
Self-confidence | Fostering trust in others |
Justice | Building group discipline through fair dealing |
Honesty | Winning respect |
Humility | Not being selfish, arrogant or divisive, and sharing praise |
When was the last time I laughed with a colleague in the office? Do I take myself too seriously?
‘United we stand, divided we fall.’
Idea 5: Leadership characteristics – individual element
Dealing successfully with individuals is very different from dealing with your team as a group, although justice is common to both. Somehow you’ve got to balance the qualities of self-confidence and audacity with those of compassion and humility if you’re to do the job really well.
The need | Quality | Functional value |
---|
Individual | Tact | Being sensitive in dealing with people |
Compassion | Showing sympathetic awareness and help |
Consistency | Enabling people to know where they stand |
Humility | Recognizing qualities/abilities and giving credit |
Honesty | Winning individual respect |
Justice | Encouraging individuals through fair dealing |
Whilst the whole may be greater than the sum of the parts, the whole is made up of parts – each individual contribution counts.
Follow-up test
The three circles model
• Have you been able to give specific examples from your own experience on how the three circles or areas of need – task, team and individual – interact with each other?
• Can you identify your natural bias:
• You tend to put the task first, and are low on team and individual.
• For you the team seems more important: you value happy relationships more than productivity or individual job satisfaction.
• Individuals are supremely important to you: you always put the individual before the task or the team, for that matter. You tend to over-identify with the individual.
• You can honestly say that you maintain a balance, and have feedback from superiors, colleagues and subordinates to prove it.
Leadership functions
1. What function of the eight do you perform at present with the most skill?
2. Have others commented favourably on your actions as a leader in that respect?
3. What function do you most tend to neglect?
Leadership qualities
Of the sixteen different characteristics listed in Ideas 3, 4 and 5, identify your personal top five and your bottom five.
Check your list with a friend who knows you well.
‘Leadership is action, not position.’
PART TWO
Performing as a Leader
The greatest ideas for performing as a leader are grouped under the key areas of setting and achieving objectives, developing leadership skills and the essential qualities of leadership.
Once you have a clear idea of the generic role and responsibilities of a leader, you need to build up your knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses (or areas for improvement) in relation to that role.
When you identify your personal goals there should always be, I suggest, at least one that relates to learning and self-development. In the speech that President John F Kennedy was on his way to deliver in Dallas when he was shot dead on that fateful day, he was going to say: ‘Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.’ Let his words live today.