Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Pascal Nyasha
5 November 2009
opinion
Harare — The Delphic oracle of more that a thousand years ago, emphasises that a leader should know himself first before he can know others.
Mary Richmond had the same sentiments when she echoed: "What is true to you". The good news and something worth to be proud of is the fact that of all the animals on earth, only we humans have self awareness.
The only way you can check or control your own mind is by being aware of it, its drives, its tendencies, and its preferences.
If unchecked, the mind can wander around, take control of the whole body and lead you astray. Self awareness is independent of the mind, it is a faculty through which you can reflect, monitor and control your thought system. One speaker said a statement that changed my life.
He said: "One who knows others may be deemed intelligent, but one who knows himself is wise".
It is true that our heads are full of other people's weaknesses, strengths, habits, you name it, but we are rarely conscious of our own habits, strengths and weaknesses.
You should be aware of your personality traits. Knowing your self is important for trait matching. "Trait matching" entails, knowing your personality traits and doing something that is in line with them . . . to achieve true success.
The world is full of people who stumble at everything, who just make decisions for example about career paths without paying regard to whether what they are made of will allow them to prosper in the area.
A motivational speaker will tell you that you can succeed at everything -- no wonder I hate being called one - because true and durable success is achievable only when you are doing things within your domain.
Yes, I agree that you could be smarter to be able to succeed in every field, but getting profits is not the ultimate thing in life, your happiness and fulfillments are important. We are tired of mentoring people who are struggling to change careers. Make it right the first time.
Personality, though consistent, can be changed. A lot of us were shy as we were growing, but now are no longer shy. You can successfully change your personality and be the person of your dream, but the first question is, "what are you going to change?"
This question shows that, you first have to be aware of yourself, of those personality traits you feel are pulling you down, you first have to be aware of the habits you feel are making you a bad leader. You have to be aware of yourself to change yourself.
Let me rush to point out some of the things you need to be aware of if you are to succeed in leadership: Be aware of, your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, and needs.
Lack of emotional awareness can lead to lack of emotional control. Our emotions are part of what determines our behaviour. As such, you should know what behaviours do your emotions produce and how does this behaviour affect your subordinates and the achievement of your goals.
Remember leadership is all about affecting in the best way, an effect that brings the desired results. Be aware of those emotions like temper, anger, fear as they directly affect your attitude towards your subordinates and towards your goals. Emotional intelligence is what I mean. The end should not be awareness, but control of emotions. Never act out of emotions, but act out of reason.
Emotions are easily manipulated by the ego, so decisions based on them are most likely to be selfish (a vice in leadership), which might lead to other problems. You should be able to recognise where you are being controlled by emotions and when by reason . . . though this is a difficult (not impossible however) thing to do.
Knowing your strengths is important. It builds confidence and leads to setting of more scaring goals. Be realistic when you evaluate your capabilities. Knowing what you are capable of doing enable you to benchmark, to challenge yourself, to know what to hope for and to have realistic expectation from yourself. As a leader, you have to know the capacity of each and every of your subordinates. This enables you to know what to delegate to each of them.
If I demand the top 10 in your organisation, could you give me? When we talk of leadership capitalising on strengths we do not mean that leaders should push people to do what they can't do . . . though sometimes they are obliged to. Give each individual a challenging task yes, but knowing what tasks to give to who helps save time.
Give those who can the difficult tasks and reward them accordingly, than giving the low performers who need a year to complete the task which can be completed in a week's time by someone.
Leaders know the strength of each of their subordinates and they give each a task which is proportional to their strengths to avoid inefficiency, overburdening, unnecessary mistakes, and a waste of time and of resources, among other things.
To change yourself, know yourself!Knowing your weaknesses helps and is equally important to knowing your strengths.
Knowing your weaknesses is a step forward in correcting them. You should also know the weaknesses of each and every of your subordinates . . . and how they interact with goal achievement. This helps to know what kind of development or mentoring they want, it enables you to give them a position and responsibilities that they will perform best in. Everyone has a weakness, discover yours too.
It is a pity that some, after realising their short comings can end up being disheartened and discouraged. The purpose of this discovery should never undermine how you feel about yourself; it should actually be the first step to becoming a better you.
Drives are those things that inspire us, those things that push us into action. In psychology, examples of drives are hunger, thirst, sex, etc. As a leader, what really inspires you? What propels you into action . . . even when you don't want?
Some leaders are inspired by goals, others by a cooperative team, and others by favourable market trends, and some by profits, some by fame, some by the desire to be respected, others by greediness and others by the general desire to conquer and succeed and others by them all (yes it's not funny). Knowing what really put you up helps to always make sure you are turbo charged for action.
Your drive usually becomes your number one concern and some drives make sure you are always in conflict with your subordinates-this is because they shape our feelings, thoughts, attitudes and our actions. Drives like greediness, fame, can set you on fire, they usually lead to selfishness, and autocracy, both of which will make sure your subordinates suspect you, are not satisfied and fulfilled and prepare some of them to quit, some to silently sabotage you, and some to openly criticise you.
While we can think and do everything, we have little influence on the outcome of a leader who is driven by goals is great since they increase profits. However, they are at risk of ignoring the sanity of the people who work the goals, their focus on success may make them blind to subordinate affairs and this may have disastrous effects.
As well, a leader who is driven by the desire to make people feel good and happy may risk being mediocre in term of goals achieved. Have high human orientation and high duty ratio, this is what is called balanced leadership. Your desire to have a pull of happy employee should not undermine your goal of profit maximisation.
Be friendly, do not be weak! While people feel good, make sure they work hard -- in fact harder, remember they need their salaries at the end of the month and they will never understand that you could not produce because you were being nice to them. I know one man who is angry, he makes people work, though he can be a darling to them sometimes. High human orientation-high duty ratio is the answer to the puzzle.
Needs are wants. What do you want to achieve? Why you want to achieve it? What do you want your subordinates to do to make sure what you want is achieved? Be clear about your needs, and communicate them comprehensibly so that those people you work with understand -- and then hold them responsible for the results.
Sharing a goal can be one of the most difficult things to those managers who cannot explain themselves clearly.
You will find out that some subordinates do not know what they are supposed to do, what they think they are supposed to do is the direct opposite of what the manager expects them to do.
This disharmony in goals is the reason why I would favour setting our goals as a department, making sure everyone understands the collective goal and their respective roles in making the goal real. Everyone should write an abstract of the organisation's goal in less than a page, outlining their role in the execution process.
You should be able to understand your moods. As a leader, your mood is not only your concern. Your subordinates are bound to interpret it and react to it. It affects them, sometimes an angry mood works miracles, it can wake everyone up to responsibility.
Be angry -- sometimes. However, it is not always that this works, it is heavily dependant on the attitude of the led. Some will mind you and some do not. Looking for the mood that makes people work is my advice right now -- isn't that what you want -- RESULTS.
As a leader, you need to be aware of your values and principles as a person. You should know what matters the most to you -and do it often and first.
Know where you are heading to and why. A leader should be aware of the vision of the organisation they lead more than anyone else.
This awareness is the only thing that enables them to apply themselves relevantly and effectively. It also helps them to direct their subordinates in the right direction, for the right, collective cause. Self awareness protects principles and long-term goals and helps make rational decisions that do not conflict with the leader herself, with the subordinates, the shareholder, board of parties and appoint a focal point where these meet, some prefer to call it success.
The leader should be aware of the shareholder's interests and this helps him maneuver through the board of directors. The main reason why some CEOs always conflict with the board, or view each other with suspicion is because of lack of awareness of each other's interests.
Pascal Nyasha is a leadership consultant and motivational speaker.
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