How to be a leader

Thanks to Carly, who volunteered me, I have had my leadership skills assessed. I have survived and written an article about the process in The Times's Career section. It was relatively painless. But now I have to do something with the feedback, I got from Piers Hollier at Get Feedback who did the analysis.

Piers tells me I'm not a bad leader: I'm highly motivated, ambitious, inspirational, influential, good at understanding others and a good problem solver. I'm also better at critical thinking than 82 per cent of management consultants - which for some reason makes me laugh.

But I am far from perfect and Piers has recommended, after a tortured series of psychometric tests and a rather strange interview, that the key development areas I need to work on are:

1. Empowering action - I need to empower people i.e delegate loads and ensure that there are clear processes for projects in place. This is so that my team can effortlessly pick up all my work should I be squished under a bus tomorrow. I also need to encourage people to develop their own projects and ideas. I must also try hard not to let the control freak in me freak out when considering all this delegation.

2. Analysing options - I don't consistantly think through all the options available to me. I'm told I could benefit from spending more time analysing all the details when devising new projects and strategies. Hopefully better delegation, planning and prioritising will give me more time to do this. Sometimes I do let enthusiasm get the better of me.

I intend to work on these points, and more generally at becoming a better manager, over the coming months: I will try to attend courses, go to workshops and read some of the many books and papers on the topic. I'll also blog about it. So I'd appreciate any advice, help or support any of you may be able to offer along the way. I'm more than a little apprehensive about putting myself forward for public self improvement in this way.

Comments

[M Thomas]

Carol, the best management and for that matter life improving book I have read is "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie (Over 16 million copies sold). This gives a sound basis for dealing with people and at the end of the day it is people that we do business with.