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Leadership Biographies

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

This saying of John Maxwell, an American author and entrepreneur sums up the whole issue of leadership quite succinctly. Many other definitions of leadership talk only about a part of the whole, either of having vision or leading by example or of pointing the way and helping others. But a true leader does all of it.

There have been hundreds and thousands of leaders in history and all of them have showcased their unique qualities. They might have been born in different historical eras or might have been shaped by different circumstances and life experiences but when it comes to leadership the core principles have remained the same as is evident through leadership biographies.

Reading leadership biographies or biography of leaders has several advantages

1. Leadership Biographies help to understand the Leadership Situation

Vince Lombardi, America’s most famous football coach once said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”

Leadership biographies bear witness to the fact that all leaders were self made. There was nothing special in them by birth and the circumstances they found themselves in were common to everyone in their time. So why it is that only one person became a leader and others chose to remain as followers? This is a crucial question which can only be answered by reading leadership biographies.

Muhammad, the founder of Islam became an orphan at the age of six. Andrew Carnegie started his career as a mere bobbin boy. Who could have predicted the success these people achieved in life? Wasn’t it a result of their hard work and efforts? Leadership biographies help us to visualize the situation the leaders found themselves in and how they decided to change their life.

2. Leadership Biographies help to throw light on Leadership Qualities, Skills and Attitudes

Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management thinkers of present times said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things”.

By reading leadership biographies, one can discover the personal qualities of the leaders which made them successful in their life. One will find that all leaders have unique qualities. No two leaders will display the same skills or abilities, yet they are able to influence and lead people around them.

Winston Churchill had a strong will and a great ability to strategize during the World War. Buddha had the courage to leave his kingdom to find a way to end suffering. Benazir Bhutto and Cleopatra were forced to become women leaders in a world of men – which they did admirably.

Each leader in history was unique with a distinct set of qualities. When we read leadership biographies, we can learn about these qualities and how we can imbibe them in ourselves.

3. Leadership Biographies help to discover the Leader in Oneself

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

If one wishes to be a leader, the way is definitely not to imitate them. Each person has his unique capability, passion and knowledge and each person finds himself in a unique situation in life.

Although principles of leadership are perennial, one cannot apply them blindly. This fact becomes crystal clear by reading leadership biographies. No leader became a leader by following another. He became a leader by making his own path.

One man whose name has become synonymous with exemplary leadership is Napoleon Bonaparte. The memoirs of Napoleon composed by his personal secretary Louis de Bourrienne gives a detailed account of his turbulent life.

Click the link below for a free e-book:

The memoirs of Napoleon, …

By reading leadership biographies, it is possible that one can discover one’s hidden potential and light the spark of leadership in oneself.

4. Leadership Biographies help to understand the World we live in

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

The present world we live in is a result of the past. By reading leadership biographies, we realize that the world was shaped and influenced to a great extent by the thoughts and actions of the leaders of the past. This helps us to better understand the world we live in and our present situation and to be able to make our personal choices.

Popularity: 33% [?]

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Leadership Training

Leadership training is the process of imparting skills to potential leaders of the organization with a view to enhancing organizational performance.

There are many reasons why leadership training is required. An individual might be promoted based on his performance but he might lack the leadership skills required for his new role. A leader might have strong leadership skills in certain areas but might be weak in others. An organization might have a policy of developing the leadership talent of the employees for growth reasons.

Leadership training can be classified into 4 key areas.

1. Leadership Training: Personal Skills

Most team members look up to their leader as a role model. Therefore the importance of personal skills leadership training is an important part of overall leadership training.

Communication Skills – Interpersonal communication with peers, superiors, subordinates, customers, and partners. Language usage and listening skills are a part of this training.

Public Speaking – To overcome fear and increase confidence while speaking in front of a group

Presentation Skills – The purpose of a presentation is to present facts and arguments in order to influence the audience towards a specific point of view. Leadership training in this skill is very important while making sales presentations to prospects.

Assertiveness – Leadership training to tackle difficult people or workplace bullies.

Stress management – Stress at the workplace can sometimes lead to depression or reduced performance. Leadership training in stress management helps the leader to achieve a balance between work, rest and recreation and also to help his team members manage stress.

A leader must develop a magnetic personality which attracts people to him. Franch Channing Haddock describes how to lead an etheric life – a life of magnetism for achieving wealth, power and success.

Click the link below for a free e-book:

etheric life – a life of magnetism, …

2. Leadership Training: Task Oriented Training

Task orientation is an important attribute of a leader and the following leadership training can help him to improve his performance of tasks.

Copy writing Skills – In today’s digital age, a leader must communicate with the target audience through websites, blogs and social networking. This training helps the leader to hone his digital communication skills.

Business writing – To develop attractive and persuasive campaigns, press releases, banners, posters and even emails.

Creativity – To learn scientific ways to think out of the box

Project management – Cost and budget control, monitoring and tracking of milestones and resource allocation.

3. Leadership Training: People Oriented Training

A true leader balances task orientation with people orientation. The following leadership training helps the leader in improving his people orientation.

Performance Appraisals Management – To effectively evaluate and motivate team members with a view to improving their performance

Interview skills – To identify and recruit the best talent for projects

Influencing – To present thoughts and ideas in a manner which will positively influence the target audience

Conflict management – Avoiding conflicts do not solve them. Leadership training in conflict management techniques will help a leader to resolve conflicts proactively and move ahead.

Facilitation and Meeting skills – How to make meetings more productive by preventing distractions and keeping the participants on the agenda.

Train the Trainer – This is a higher level training for leaders in which they are taught how to train other team members to take on leadership positions.

4. Leadership Training: Organization Oriented Training

Every leader must share the vision of the organizational goals and direction. This helps him to translate the bigger picture into daily activities more effectively. Leadership training in this area includes.

Change Management – To impart a sound theoretical understanding of the principles of change management like TQM, BPR and so on.

Strategic Thinking – In order to assume higher level responsibility a leader must be conversant with the organizational vision, mission and competitive strategy. This leadership training helps to increase understanding in strategic directions.

Customer Service – To create a win-win situation between the organization and its customers

Media Skills – This training aims to impart media management skills to the leader which helps him to address newspaper journalists or television reporters with equal ease.

Business Networking – Developing contacts with important people, ability to socialize and participate in events is an important skill for a leader which is taught in this training.

Business Relationship – How to develop and maintain cordial relationships with business partners and associates.

Negotiation – This leadership training develops a leader’s skills in negotiations whether it is to do with business deals or with employee salaries.

It is important for a leader to identify which leadership training he needs in order to become a more effective leader.

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Leadership Skills

Leadership Skills are soft skills that can be trained for. If an individual finds himself leading a team, he can learn leadership skills in order to be more effective. There are 11 leadership skills which psychologists have identified.

1. Leadership Skills: Understanding

Understanding means knowing the needs, motivations, strengths, weaknesses, fears and ambitions of oneself and one’s team members. This skill can be learned by engaging in informal conversations with team members to discover why they joined the organization, what are their expectations, interests and future plans. Of all leadership skills, this is the most important.

2. Leadership Skills: Resourcefulness

Resourcefulness is the ability to leverage all the resources of the organization including people’s knowledge, skills, and experience in order to achieve the organizational goals. This skill can be learned by creating a list of people along with their abilities and to use it in the planning process.

3. Leadership Skills: Communication

Communication is one of the most essential of leadership skills. It has two aspects – speaking and listening. While giving instructions, a leader must ensure that team members are listening; he must speak in a clear tone and use unambiguous words; he must ask members to take notes and verify whether the message was received as intended. While listening, a leader must pay attention and take notes; he should ask questions if something is not clear and must confirm that he has understood the point correctly.

4. Leadership Skills: Planning

Planning is one of the most useful of leadership skills. It can be learned by starting first with a clear understanding of the goals followed by an assessment of the resources required to achieve that goal. The third step is to weigh different options in terms of time, money and risk. Finally, the plan must be prepared, reviewed and put into action.

5. Leadership Skills: Control

The leader is the only one who understands the big picture. Most team members are only focused on their scope of the task. Therefore the leadership skill of control must be exercised to keep the project on track. This can be learned by constantly observing the progress of the team members, clearing obstacles and dealing with crisis.

6. Leadership Skills: Evaluation

The skill of evaluation is an important aspect of leadership. It helps to improve the team performance in the long term. At the end of every project, the leader must evaluate whether the project was completed as per expectations, whether the desired results were achieved on time. From the people angle, the leader must take feedback from team members – whether they enjoyed working, whether there were any interpersonal conflicts and whether work was allocated according to capability.

7. Leadership Skills: Personal Example

Actions speak louder than words. A leader must set an example through his actions and not just his words. To learn this skill, a leader must think from the point of view of his team members and find out what they would expect from their leader. Personal example is one of those leadership skills which inspire the most.

No other book describes how a leader should set a personal example better than the Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by Louis Constant Wairy.

Click the link below for a free e-book:

Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, …

8. Leadership Skills: Delegation

A true leader is concerned about the overall development of the skills and abilities of his team. By delegating, the leader gives sufficient opportunities to team members to develop and exercise their skills making them feel empowered.

9. Leadership Skills: Counseling

A leader must encourage, reassure and solve the problems of team members. The leader must first listen and understand the situation, then he must propose alternatives and identify the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative. Finally, he must allow the team member to decide for himself.

10. Leadership Skills: Representation

A leader must be able to represent his group in front of others. To learn this skill, a leader must have a good understanding of what decision would be in the best interest for his team members and the organization.

11. Leadership Skills: Coaching

One of the most significant leadership skills is that of coaching. A leader must be able to set learning objectives for his team and facilitate the process to help each team member recognize the need for learning a skill and practice it in the course of his work.

All leaders might not have all the 11 skills at the beginning. By a process of self discovery, the leader must find out which skills he lacks and develop them.

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Leadership Development

Leadership development is the definite, planned and conscious process of developing leadership skills and qualities in individuals in order to prepare them for positions of leadership.

Most human resources divisions of organizations have one of their functions as leadership development. Under this function, they identify team leaders and other individuals possessing desirable attributes and train them in leadership for assuming higher responsibility positions.

Leadership development is by no means only an organizational process. Even individuals can take steps for their personal leadership development because the method is the same.

Leadership Development: Knowledge Acquisition

In order to prepare oneself for a leadership position, it is important to learn the different leadership styles and under which situations to use them. For instance, an autocratic leadership style is useful for dealing with unskilled labor while a laissez faire leadership style is more suitable for experienced and knowledgeable team members. An individual aspiring to be a leader must develop a balance between task oriented and people oriented leadership approaches.

An important constituent of a leadership development program is learning of management theories. One must learn about change management, six sigma, total quality management and process re-engineering.

Leadership Development: Skills Acquisition

Skills can be learned and polished only with practical experience. Therefore it is important to apply the knowledge learned in day to day situations.

There are several important leadership skills which help the individual to become a better leader. It is important to identify which skills you require to develop in yourself. For example, one may be a good communicator but might lack planning skills or one may be very resourceful but might lack the ability to delegate.

To be a successful leader, it is important to develop all the leadership skills to a reasonable extent. One can consider joining a formal leadership development program to learn these skills.

Leadership Development: Personal Commitment

It is not easy becoming a leader and fulfilling the responsibilities that come with the role. In many situations, you might not be formally declared a leader. In such cases, you might have to assume the position of a servant leader. It is important to develop the attitude and passion for leadership before aspiring to be a leader.

One of the best ways to wake up the inner leader is to read leadership biographies. All through history there have been many leaders who have set an example to others and it is very inspiring and motivating to read their biographies. One learns about the situations which prompted them to be leaders and also comes across real life examples of how they managed difficult situations.

One of the most inspiring leaders in American history was Abraham Lincoln. By reading his papers and writings, one can get a peek into his great min to learn leadership development.

Leadership Development: Self Awareness

Most leadership development activities start with self awareness. The individual must understand himself first before he can understand others. Empathy or ability to put oneself in the position of others is an important trait of a leader.

Understanding oneself means to know one’s desires, motives and behavior. Through self awareness, one discovers one’s strengths and weaknesses. Then one is better able to understand the behavior and motivations of other people and be in a position to help them.

Self awareness is not an easy thing to acquire. It requires a long practice of observing oneself in one’s interaction with others. In observing we watch our reactions and thought process in response to the environment and people.

Another way of discovering one’s leadership potential is by taking a leadership assessment personality test. Many leadership development programs conduct these objective type tests which require you to mark choices in a variety of situations.

Leadership Development: Coaching

Leadership development training can be done at all levels because learning is a never ending process. While the junior level executives might need to first start with knowledge acquisition and skills acquisition and to develop a balance between their different skill sets, the senior level executives can also take steps to enhance their leadership potential.

One of the ways of doing this is coaching or mentoring. It is said that when you teach others, you learn better. So advanced leadership development programs include mentoring and coaching skills.

Leadership development is a lifelong process which requires a sincere passion and commitment to serve others.

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Leadership Styles

From Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama and Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates, great men have their unique leadership styles. In order to perform well in one’s role be it a teacher or an entrepreneur or simply a team leader, one must understand the different leadership styles.

Psychologists and experts in human behavior have classified leadership styles into 10 main types. No one leadership style is better than any other but by using the right style for the right situation one can produce the desired results.

Leadership Styles: Transactional

In a transactional leadership, the role of the leader is limited but total over a specific task or goal. The basic premise is that team members must obey their leader on the job and that is what they are paid for. The leader has the power to reward or punish employees depending on whether they work according to the agreed directives or not. This leadership style is most suited for short-term-tight-budget-hard-deadline projects.

Leadership Styles: Autocratic

An overzealous form of the transactional leadership style is the autocratic style. In this style, the leader does not give any opportunity for team members to voice their opinions. The team members have to follow instructions without questioning. This autocratic leadership style is common in the military.

One of the world’s greatest military commanders Napoleon Bonaparte exemplifies the autocratic style of leadership. John Abbott writes in detail how Napoleon won wars in almost impossible situations.

Click the link below for a free e-book:

Napoleon Bonaparte, …

Leadership Styles: Bureaucratic

In bureaucratic leadership style, the leaders as well as the team members have to follow rules set down by the organization. The function of the leader is to enforce the rules and correct any divergences from the standard operating procedures. This leadership style thwarts creativity of the team members but works effectively in risky situations involving safety procedures or critical situations like accounting practices. Most government offices use the bureaucratic leadership style.

Leadership Styles: Democratic or Participative

In a democratic leadership style, the leader usually consults his team members about decisions and suggestions. Although the leader is responsible to take the final decision, morale of the team improves since they feel involved in the decision making process. Compared to an autocratic style, the democratic style is slow in decision making but the results are usually better in the long term.

Leadership Styles: Servant

A servant leadership style is a form of participative or democratic leadership. The term was coined by Robert Greenleaf, who proposed that real leaders need not be recognized as leaders. Any team member who is performing his role and contributing to the organization goals is a servant leader.

Leadership Styles: Task Oriented

This leadership style is a mild form of the autocratic style. In this the leader is chiefly focused on the planning, organizing, monitoring and implementation of the tasks. A task oriented leader is not concerned about his team members’ needs possibly due to a lack of interpersonal skills. As a result motivation suffers and attrition increases.

Leadership Styles: People Oriented or Relationship Focused

The people oriented leadership style is the opposite of the task oriented leadership style. A relationship focused leader is only concerned about the growth and well being of his team members sometimes at the cost of the organizational goals. Team members feel motivated but might lose sight of their purpose.

Leadership Styles: Laissez Faire

The French term Laissez Faire means “leave it as it is” and the leaders who follow the laissez faire leadership style usually let things and people remain as they are. This leadership style is suitable for teams consisting of self motivated and skilled members who do not need much supervision, just the occasional review. However, this leadership style turns out to be a disaster while managing a team of new recruits.

Leadership Styles: Transformational

Leaders who have a vision and make it their purpose to communicate it and get buy in from as many members of the organization as possible are known as transformational leaders. The premise is that a shared understanding of the vision will act as a catalyst to speed up the organizational growth. Transformational leaders work at a higher level and they usually need the support of task oriented and people oriented leaders to implement their vision.

Leadership Styles: Charismatic

A charismatic leader can appear to be a transformational leader because he is good in motivating others. However, charismatic leaders tend to be self centered without a sincere passion to generate the shared understanding of the real transformational leader.

Situational Leadership Style

A good leader will determine based on the skills and experience of his team, the nature of the task to be accomplished, the organizational and external environment and his comfort level to decide which leadership styles to adopt for a specific situation.

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