The five (5) measures of a successful leader

There are many who want to be called leader. For example, there are politicians who want to exercise leadership but they miserably fail for the reason that they are not able to comprehend the true measure of a successful leader in politics which is actually servant leadership.

There are also executives of private corporations who exercise position of leadership but after a year or two they resign because they miserably fail to measure-up to the pressure and high standards of successful leadership in the private sector. 

What really are the measures of a successful leader? Here are five (5) feel free to add some more. 

1. The first measure is the willingness to lead by example. You show and lead the way, you do not just lay around your office you instead work hard for your subordinates to see so that they will follow.

2. The second measure is to ensure that you are always accessible to the people that you lead. One of the many leadership pitfalls is to isolate yourself in a room while your subordinates are outside of it working. When you limit your accessibility and when you seldom mingle with your people. It simply means that you do not want to be disturbed that you are an important person and your people are nonentity.

3. The third measure of a successful leader is to have human skills. This simply means that you can skilfully and honestly relate with every individual in your organization.  Your people will certainly respect you if you know how to respect them and if you know how to honestly relate with them.

4. The fourth measure is to be competent and knowledgeable about every aspect of your job and the job of your subordinates. There are managers who are well versed with their own job description but when it comes to their subordinates they know very little about it. A good manager/leader must also aspire to know the job of his subordinates.

5. The fifth measure is to ensure that you will always be humble, this simply means that a leader must at all times be ready to serve and not to be served. He must not look at his job as a means for him to be exalted. 

There are leaders who have this mindset that they are already situated in an ivory tower. That people below them must always bow to them. True and dedicated leaders are not like this they will remain humble at all times. The higher they ascend in the organizational hierarchy the more that they plant their feet firmly on the ground. - Marino J. Dasmarinas     

Job Enrichment and the role of Managers

A manager was looking for an organizational method to further boost the motivation of his deserving subordinates.  In his research he stumbled upon the topic of job enrichment and  it immediately created an interest in him. So he implemented it in his organization and this method did well because it increased the motivation of his subordinates which resulted to higher efficiency and production output.

Job enrichment is an organizational process used by managers to see to it that their subordinates are continuously motivated. It gives the deserving subordinate the responsibility and this creates a very good reason for a manager to stay in his organization.

However job enrichment is always fused with accountability. This means that the subordinate is always accountable for his every action to his manager. The more that a subordinate is given freedom and control in his assigned task or department the more that he becomes accountable to his superior/s.

Job enrichment is actually an instrument of motivation it satisfies the growth and self actualization needs of an employee. But not every employee or subordinate is deserving of this motivational method only those who are competent and responsible deserves job enrichment.

Therefore the manager must be careful in dispensing job enrichment, he must not dispense it for the reason of favoritism.  Job enrichment must always be dispensed side by side with competence and responsibility. It must never be given based on favoritism or any other form of biased decision. - Marino J. Dasmarinas

Wisdom from the ANTS

How many times have we seen ants patiently falling in line to get their food? Countless times already, we have seen it practically everywhere. When there’s food that they could partake of, they are there not only to partake it. They are there to bring it to the place where they stay, they save it as they say, for the rainy days.

We can derive a good deal of wisdom from the attitude of ants that we can apply to      our organization and even to our own lives.

 Here are the following:

1.) Discipline - Notice how ants fall in line with discipline when they get their food. Every organization needs discipline for without discipline there would be chaos and problems. Just imagine an undisciplined human resource that would only go to work whenever they want to. 

2.) Saving for the rainy days - For so long as there’s food that they could partake they’re there, not only to eat they are there to bring to their dwelling some of it.  They save it when their unable to go out to hunt for food due to rainy weather, this is simple inventory method. In any organization inventory of supplies, materials and even potential employees are very important to sustain its operation.

3.) They are very united or they have that team mentality - Notice if you accidentally disturb them or hurt them they fight back not as an individual but as a group or as a team. In an organization team esprit or esprit de corps is very important this is precisely the reason why an organization conducts team building sessions.

The application of this wisdom is not solely restricted to organization we can also use this in our lives. - Marino J. Dasmarinas

What is the Culture of your Organization?

Organization culture or corporate culture is the soul of an organization it is unseen but you can easily feel and perceive it. For example, how the employees behave (shared values), their esprit de corps, their organizational beliefs and ideals.  

Those in charge of implementing this culture are the top management and their main responsibility is to see to it that the culture that they want to implement is cascaded down to the lowest level member of the organization.

Let us take for example a successful technology based organization. If someone is asked of its organization’s culture what comes to mind is its continuous culture of innovation. And its competent workforce that is why it is always ahead from its competitors.

Positive culture in organization is implemented by means of effective communication using the methods of lectures, training and workshop. Then, there will be specific time frames to measure its effectiveness in terms of employee attitudes and shared values directly related to their productivity.

Aside from achieving profitability the main agenda of Organization Culture is to create a collective positive identity inside as well as outside of the organization. This is the reason why when a successful organization is mentioned we immediately have an idea about its competitive identity simply because that is their culture.

What is the present culture of your organization? - Marino J. Dasmarinas

Are you a successful leader/manager?

A successful leader is someone who focuses not on himself or on his authority he zeroes in on the people that he serves.

For example, if a university lecturer will focus on himself he would naturally want to impose his authority and discipline on his class. He would shun all suggestions from his students on how to further improve the transmittal of learning. 

Would he be a successful leader that imparts knowledge if his attitude is like this? Of course not! He would instead impart fear and disrespect from his students.  So how could he become a successful leader of his class?  He needs to listen to the inputs of his students on how to further improve the exchange of learning and if the inputs are helpful and reasonable then by all means use it.

In an organizational setting be it private or government; managers/leaders should also learn to listen to those that they serve. They must not allow themselves to be blinded by their momentary power. The mistake of some managers/leaders the moment they ascend to their leadership position is they also become aloof and they start to isolate themselves from their subordinates.

They situate themselves away from thier subordinates thus they start to lose contact with them. So what would happen if this is the case? Sooner or later there will be a failure of leadership that will eventually result to organizational failure as well.

Therefore a successful leader/manager should learn to listen, he should learn to always firmly plant his feet on the ground no matter how high he may rise in the organizational hierarchy. - Marino J. Dasmarinas

The functions of Management and its effects in your Organization

They say that no man is an island, thus all of us belong to an organization: Family organization, company organization, church organization, government organization or any other organization.

For these organizations to function properly there must be someone who will take charge and run it using the four functions of management namely: Planning, Organizing, Leading and Controlling. A very good leader must know how to properly engage these four functions of management otherwise if he doesn’t know how to use these four functions there will be failure in the organization.

The first function is Planning:

In Planning, a very good leader/manager must set realistic goals and he must strategize on how he could best achieve these goals. For example if the goal is to put up a new business, let us say a restaurant. The first step if we like to put up a restaurant business is to conduct a feasibility study so that we would know if the business has a chance to succeed (the traffic of people, the location, the financial capability of the population etc…). If the outcome of our FS is favorable then we must set in motion the goals and how we could best achieve it.

The next Management function that we must do is to Organize:

In Organizing, the leader/manager should see to it that the human and non human assets are properly organized so that the anticipated plan could be successfully carried out. The process that goes here are the following:

1. Recruitment of human resources and seeing to it that they are qualified and could effectively carry out their job description.

2. Procurement of the non human resources that the restaurant needs for it to begin its operation we must also see to it that these are of best quality so that we could maximize its usefulness and effectiveness.

Then comes the next function is called Leading:

A good leader must be hands on in a restaurant business or in any business for that matter. So that he will have a firsthand experience about the many  environments within the organization. He would have to influence and lead the way for his workers so that they will have a positive work attitude that will result on the achievement of the goals of his organization.

The last functions but certainly not the least is Controlling:

The function of Management Control is not an end function of management. It could come while the Planning, Organizing and Leading functions are on-going. For instance in the business Planning stage once the owner realizes that his plan is somewhat unrealistic already, then that’s the time where the function of Controlling will come in. the same scenarios goes for Leading and Organizing. Basically the function of Controlling is a regulatory function that creates check and balance in an organization so that actual performance will measure up to forecasted goals.

Management is an on-going process, this simply means that for as long as the organization exist these four functions of management will also continue to move and operate. - Marino J. Dasmarinas

Management: The process of effectively getting things done through the effort of other people?

During the last two minutes of a very close basketball game the coach will normally call a timeout  to carefully diagram a number of winning plays to ensure his team would win the game. 

He will tell his players to follow the designed plays to the letter. Once the plays are followed it would ensure their triumph. In that process the coach got things done through the efforts of his players.

But it is not actually easy to get things done through other people because leaders/mamagers need to do thier own homework too. As Managers/Leaders they need to show to thier subordinate that they know every aspect of the things that they want them to do.

For example, if a leader/manager's objective is to increase his organization's sales for the second-half of a calendar year. It’s therefore incumbent upon the leader/manager to masterfully study the marketing strategy that he/she will be using.

Before he/she cascade it to his/her subordinates in that process when workshop time comes on how to operationalize the marketing strategy the leader/manager will now be able to answer every question that they will be thrown at him.

Let us always remember that before we can get things done through our subordinates we need to know every detail of the things that we want them to do. - Marino J. Dasmarinas