Shawn Doyle - Jumpstart Your Leadership: 10 Jolts To Leverage Your Leadership

JUMPSTART
your
LEADERSHIP

10 JOLTS
TO LEVERAGE YOUR LEADERSHIP

SHAWN DOYLE

Copyright 2013Shawn Doyle

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page-copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request.

Sound Wisdom
167 Walnut Bottom Road
Shippensburg, PA 17257

www.soundwisdom.com

This book and all other Sound Wisdom books are available at bookstores and distributors worldwide.

ISBN 13: 978-1-937879-20-4

ISBN Ebook: 978-1-937879-23-5

For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / 17 16 15 14 13

This book is dedicated with the utmost respect and admiration to the best leader I have ever reported to, Mr. Filemon Lopez. There are leaders and there are managersFilemon is a true and gifted leader, who changes lives. I know because mine was once one of them.

Love and respect do not automatically accompany a position of leadership. They must be earned.

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

HELLO, and welcome to Jumpstart Your Leadership. Are your jumper cables ready? Are they hooked up to your leadership battery? Over the last 23 years, I have conducted countless leadership programs and have delivered keynote speeches for corporations and companies both small and large. I have seen many different situations, and have heard lots of leadership nightmare stories. To be blunt, there is one thing that Im still amazed by: leaders in many organizations still lack basic leadership competence. Even more astoundingly, companies often dont see what is missing!

Im glad that you decided to join me in this journey through Jumpstart Your Leadership. I am excited because Im convinced that if you take this material and apply it, you will see dramatic changes and a jolt in your leadership skills. Even more exciting are the results that you will see as a leader working with your team. In short, you can become the leader. You know what I mean; you know the onethe person whom everyone wants to work with, the rare and special leader who inspires and motivates the team. You can be that leader. Really, I just know it.

Why did I decide to write this book? I wrote this book because I want to make a difference in the world and because I see many leaders who are struggling with leadership. As a result, theyre very frustrated.

In many organizations, people are promoted to leadership positions as a result of technical competence. These people are, of course, thrilled to be promoted. However, in many cases they soon realize that technical competence does not necessarily equal leadership competence. Herein lies the problem. They will not admit that they dont know how to lead, since that may be seen as a sign of weaknessno one wants to admit not knowing something. As a result, they continue to struggle, because most companies dont provide any appropriate leadership development.

The companies that these leaders work for have made a huge strategic error, because they assume that the person who got promoted has the talent and ability to lead, to manage, and to supervise. This approach hasnt worked well in the past, and it doesnt work well today. Whats the solution? One of the main solutions is to teach leaders core concepts and then train them to apply those concepts. This leads to a massive increase in leadership effectivenessand more importantly, results.

Justin Jones was a brilliant and talented member of the IT team. He was a great worker who got along well with everyone. After a few years at the company, the effectiveness and speed of Justins work had been noticed by the right people, so he was promoted and given a team of 16 people reporting to him. When Justin got promoted, he was thrilled and initially excited about the work and the opportunity. However, not long after his promotion, he began to have problems. A couple of people on his team could not stand one another and were constantly arguing. One team member suffered from a low level of confidence, while another team member was painfully and clearly incompetent. They needed to be fired. Justin hadnt realized what hed gotten himself into. He recognized that he needed training in leadership skills and techniques. Still, he did not want to admit to his company that he didnt know what he was doing. He was afraid that he would be instantly demoted and humiliated, forced to go back to his old job. So what did Justin do? He adopted the classic technique: He decided that the best approach was to lead people the way his manager led him. After all, his manager was successful, right? His manager had been promoted and was well perceived in the company as hard-nosed and results-oriented.

By the way, this isnt a true storyJustin is a fictional character. Keep in mind, though, that every day throughout the world, there are people promoted to leadership positions who share Justins pain. Think about the problems that are inherent in the Justins of the world. We have managers who lack confidence because they dont know how to lead. We have team members who are frustrated because they are reporting to managers who dont know how to lead. We have managers who are emulating the behaviors of bad managers whom theyve worked with over the years. This is an invitation for disaster, because we have the blind leading the seeing, the unskilled leading the skilled. This leads to high levels of frustration and low morale in many organizations.

In this book, Ive boiled down what I know about leadership. This is based on some 23 years of research and experience, both as a leader and as a coach and trainer of leaders throughout the corporate world. Think of them as jolts to your leadership battery. I have deliberately left this book short and sweet because I know that everyone is time-challenged; but dont confuse quantity with quality! Understand that if you apply these concepts, you will be successful. The results that you get may even surprise you!

In a nutshell, these are the 10 jolts that were going to cover:

In this chapter, I will review with you some important reasons why your organization needs to have a mission and vision statement to be effective. More broadly, Ill outline why having a mission and vision statement will lead to your increased effectiveness in leading the team toward a destinationand the destination is success.

Here you go! I will give you the critical tools and techniques for developing plans that look beyond today, tomorrow, this month, and this quarter. In order to lead people effectively, you have to be able to create strategies and solid plans so that your team can help generate the results. I will show you how to put together short-, mid-, and long-term plans.

The best, most talented leaders are generalists: people who know how to hire specialists with expertise in their respective areas. In this chapter, I will tell you how to do just that.

Leaders need to be skilled communicators and communicate regularly and frequently with everyone on the team so that everyone feels acknowledged and appreciated. In this chapter, I will give you approaches and strategies to help you create a high-level communication culture that builds morale and reduces turnover.