Leadership In A Week

Be A Leader In Seven Simple Steps

Carol O'Connor

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781473609570
• eBook ISBN: 9781444159363
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Leadership In A Week is a simple and straightforward guide to leadership success, giving you everything you need to know in just seven short chapters. From inspiring others and gaining their support, to setting priorities, giving direction and making decisions, you'll explore your inner resources and discover your untapped leadership qualities.This book introduces you to the main themes and ideas of leading, giving you a basic knowledge and understanding of the key concepts, together with practical and thought-provoking exercises. Whether you choose to read it in a week or in a single sitting, Leadership In A Week is your fastest route to success: - Sunday: Self-awareness
- Monday: Understanding people
- Tuesday: Communication
- Wednesday: Authority and power
- Thursday: Making decisions
- Friday: Connecting and linking
- Saturday: Vision and inspiration ABOUT THE SERIES
In A Week books are for managers, leaders, and business executives who want to succeed at work. From negotiating and content marketing to finance and social media, the In A Week series covers the business topics that really matter and that will help you make a difference today. Written in straightforward English, each book is structured as a seven-day course so that with just a little work each day, you will quickly master the subject. In a fast-changing world, this series enables readers not just to get up to speed, but to get ahead.

There are two approaches to decision making: rational (step by step) and creative (intuition driven). Leaders who can draw on both approaches make better decisions.

Today’s programme, however, focuses on rational decision making. It is useful for leaders who are required to make fast decisions when under pressure. It also helps leaders develop their analytical skills, forcing them to think clearly when faced with a sea of information. The three core topics for rational decision making are:

• setting priorities

• clarifying goals

• a step-by-step method.

Setting priorities

Leaders often have to make several decisions at once and juggle different streams of information at the same time. They also suffer distraction when their decisions have an impact on other matters. When this happens, they need to identify just how much interdependence exists across a variety of issues.

Setting priorities is therefore an essential skill. This takes discipline because some decisions demand attention even though they lack genuine urgency or importance. Alternatively, other truly vital matters can be ignored because they lack glamour or a noisy advocate pressing for their attention.

The first step is to recognize that there are two aspects to every priority: urgency and importance. For example, assigning a staff member to give a group of schoolchildren a tour of the building has limited business importance. It becomes urgent when the children are standing in the cold while waiting to be invited inside.

The leader’s task is to identify these two aspects and then act upon them.

Urgent and important

It takes skill to put decisions into these two categories, a skill that is usually developed through trial and error. There is no golden rulebook to guide a leader to see what is crucial, nor are there right and wrong answers. Over time and with practice, leaders learn to balance urgency with importance.

The main challenge arises when some decisions appear to fit into neither category while others fit both. Also, there are decisions that are only urgent because they have deadlines and provide the basis for future decisions. For example, an organization may want to add an extension to its building and it therefore decides to file a request with the town council. Meeting the council’s deadline for this filing has urgency, although the actual building work is scheduled for the next year.

Setting priorities begins by making a list of all the decisions currently under review. To illustrate this, let’s imagine that the manager of a ten-person accounts department decides to review all of the upcoming decisions and issues.

He begins by making his list: office decoration, holiday schedules, allocation of staff to new projects and a new health insurance package proposed by the company’s personnel office. Each of these decisions includes sub-issues that contribute to making the main decision.

However, the manager wants to avoid getting drawn into the details of each decision before deciding their urgency and importance. His time is particularly tight and so he wants clarity about deadlines as well as an idea about workload so that he can manage day-to-day business and meet future goals.

After the manager lists all the decisions, each can be assessed for urgency and importance. Another list could include all of the sub-issues under each main decision.

...

List of items	Urgent	Important
Office decoration	No	No
Holiday schedules	Yes	No
Staff project allocation	Yes	Yes

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title
• About the Author
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Sunday: Self-awareness
• Monday: Understanding people
• Tuesday: Communication
• Wednesday: Authority and power
• Thursday: Making decisions
• Friday: Connecting and linking
• Saturday: Vision and inspiration
• 7 × 7
• Answers
• Further reading and information
• Copyright