John Adairs 100 Greatest Ideas for Effective Leadership And Management

by John Adair Capstone 2004 256 pages

Focus
Leadership & Mgt. Strategy Sales & Marketing Corporate Finance Human Resources Technology & Production Small Business Economics & Politics Industries & Regions Career Development Personal Finance Concepts & Trends

Take-Aways
Organization and planning are the keys to time management. Stand up when people drop by your office and dont invite them to sit down that keeps casual meetings short. Only handle any piece of paper once. Make a decision on what to do with it and do it. Keep your desk clean and youll work more efficiently. A leader should be enthusiastic, honest and fair. Creative people love challenges and the company of other creative people. To manage a team effectively, make sure you communicate clearly. Effective communication is simple and short, but no more so than necessary. The biggest obstacle to creativity is the thought that you are not creative. Test and examine yourself frequently; hold yourself to a high standard and youll probably rise to meet it.

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Relevance
What You Will Learn In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) Essential techniques for managing yourself; and 2) Tips for becoming an efficient manager. Recommendation John Adair offers a very good little handbook of leadership and management counsel, with some additional advice on setting personal and life goals. He provides little original material and freely gives credit to others for the ideas he borrows. He is clear and straightforward in his presentation, wasting no words. It would be benecial to keep this book in a desk drawer or on a convenient bookshelf and look into it every day or two, reading a single page or even a single paragraph. getAbstract recommends thinking of it as a useful reminder of things you probably already know, but may forget to practice. As Adair advises, one way to manage your time is to use book abstracts whenever possible. And, see, you already do.

Abstract
Ideas for Organizing Your Work and Your Time Keep a tight rein on meetings. Dont go to unnecessary meetings and dont spend more time in meetings than you must. Be clear about a meetings purpose, what will happen if it doesnt take place and who must attend. To organize your work and your time:
A leader is the kind of person who has the appropriate knowledge and skill to lead a group to achieve its ends willingly.

Perfection may elude me, but I can achieve excellence.

Meet in other peoples ofces so you can leave. Then you control when the meeting ends. When people drop by your ofce, stand up to talk. Dont invite them to sit down. Check your watch; state how much time you have for the meeting or conversation. Stick to the subject and dont go off on tangents. Be pleasantly but rmly disciplined. Classify and prioritize paperwork, and only handle any piece of paper once. Skim unless you have to read. Become a clean desk person. Only have one job underway at a time. Write simply and clearly, and get to the point. Plan your phone calls. Time management is a matter of knowing what you want to accomplish and focusing on what you need and want to achieve. Identify goals and make plans. Set priorities and stick to them. Organize your work. Take care of your health and minimize stress. Get enough sleep and exercise, and take time off to think. Dont procrastinate. Train your staff so you can delegate. Audit your time so you will know how you are spending it.

Ideas for Understanding Leadership Effective leadership means addressing the demands of the job, the needs of the group as a whole and the needs of the individuals in the group. You should also know that:
Leadership is a function of three things: the leader, the circumstances and the people involved.
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John Adairs 100 Greatest Ideas


Keep a record (a daily time log) of where your time currently goes break your day into fifteen-minute chunks for recording purposes. Do this for a week or so and review after each batch of three or four days.

The functional dimension of leadership involves dening the job, planning the work, brieng the people, monitoring, evaluating progress, keeping people motivated and giving an example. Leaders must be able to initiate a job and to persevere efciently, truthfully, condently, industriously, boldly and modestly. Therefore leaders must be tactful, compassionate, consistent, humble, honest and fair.

Ideas for Leading Decision-making ability, leadership and integrity are the top three characteristics of a successful chief executive, but all leaders must be able to inspire team members. To be a leader, rst dene the job at hand. Be very clear and specic about what needs to be done and when. Set realistic but challenging expectations. Make sure that all the steps and goals you outline can be measured and monitored. Then, plan, prepare and motivate, using these ideas:
Be prepared. For good performance, plan and prepare properly. Call in experts for advice when you need it. Brief your people to keep them informed and motivated. Steer with loose reins. Give your people enough autonomy to work but keep enough control to make sure they dont pull in contradictory directions. Focus on the consequences of actions so that you can evaluate performance, offer training to people who need it and make judgments about employees abilities. You cant give what you dont have. To motivate others, rst motivate yourself. One of the best motivators is success. Recognize and reward it. Organize yourself so that you can organize others. Lead by example. Dont be afraid to get your hands dirty. Treat your people as youd like them to treat each other. Admit it when you make a mistake and be generous in your praise of others. Do you have what it takes to lead? Examine your leadership conscience. Identify any shortcomings and make a plan to overcome or remedy them.

Shape your plan for the day by listing the various components, prioritizing them and planning the time accordingly.

Whilst the whole may be greater than the sum of the parts, the whole is made up of parts each individual contribution counts.

Ideas for Setting Goals Take an inventory of yourself. Identify your strengths and skills, your values, the kind of work youd like to do, the kind of work or circumstances you dont like and so on. Write your obituary and read it. Is that the person you are, or want to be? Then:
Set three levels of goals: for your life, for the next ve years and for the next year. Shorter-term goals should serve longer-term goals. Set similar goals for your career and for your business. Identify where your business or career is now and determine where you want it to be.

Ideas for Making Decisions To make sharp decisions, you must be able to see the goal clearly. Collect any needed data and identify possible actions. Evaluate each alternative, choose one, try it and test it. Also:
To motivate others, you must be motivated yourself.

Think effectively. To make good decisions, work from the facts as they are and understand your options. Think positively. Everything is possible and every job can be accomplished. The ability to make good decisions is the key to effective management. Management is about deciding what work needs to be done and deciding how to do it.
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When facing a difficult decision, it could be worth getting people together, asking for ideas or brainstorming them and testing and evaluating the suggestions.

Make the best decision, not the easiest or most popular decision. Beware of compromise that subtracts from quality. Use analysis to identify the causes of problems, the stakes and the effects of action, but do not allow yourself to suffer paralysis by analysis. Think logically and base your inferences and deductions on the facts. Analysis is not the totality of decision-making. Synthesis is also important. Synthesis means seeing the big picture and the relationships among the elements. Rank your available options in terms of necessity, feasibility and preference. Be imaginative. Try to envision scenarios. Let your philosophy and ideas guide you. Consider your values, why you are in business and your business strengths and vulnerabilities. Trust your hunches. Dont be whipped around by them, but dont dismiss them either. Be creative. Think new ways. Evaluate and make judgments about things and people. Learn who will tell you the truth and who just says what you want to hear. Value the eccentrics who blurt out the uncomfortable truth.

In the words of John Buchan: The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

Ideas for Building Teams As you create working teams, remember that people respond well to trust and respect. They value responsibility and usually work best with some degree of autonomy. Make sure everyone understands the teams job, responsibilities, plans, conditions, resources and goals. If you the leader do not understand something, make sure you clarify it. Then:
Do not leave your people in the dark, under-equipped or without an example. Make sure you have the right people on your team, and that they have clearly understood equitable standards to work toward. Make performance reviews regular, frank and fair. Welcome advice and address grievances promptly. Make sure every individual on the team knows what goal he or she is working for and how his or her work affects others on the team. Teams have their own internal dynamic. Watch out for the formation of cliques.

If you give people respect and trust, some real responsibility, together with a degree of independence, they will reward you with their best.

Ideas for Creating and Innovating Start by overcoming the biggest obstacles to creativity: pessimism, fear, inadequate time for thought, obsession with rules, easy assumptions, excess logic and the refusal to believe that you are, indeed, creative. After that:
Look at the bigger picture. Get ideas from unaccustomed sources. Be alert to coincidences and inspirations. Think by analogy. Put habitual judgments away and try to see old things in new ways. The four phases of creation are preparation, germination, inspiration and experimentation. Every organization needs people who conceive new ideas, and those who make them work, make them commercial, risk bringing them to market, change the organization accordingly, champion innovation and shepherd, protect and mentor innovators. Creative people respond well to recognition, autonomy, interaction with creative colleagues, challenge and a workplace that tolerates mistakes as the price of success. To encourage creativity: recognize good ideas, brainstorm with the team, allow conicts to happen and make sure everyone gets to exercise his or her skill. Communicate the importance of creativity. Make sure that new ideas do not meet an indifferent or hostile reception (that is, ridicule, condemnation, rejection and faint praise).
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None of us is as good as all of us, so build a community of creativity and innovation.

John Adairs 100 Greatest Ideas


You get more of the behavior you reward.

Creative organizations have top-executive commitment to creativity. They are exible, non-bureaucratic, risk tolerant, team-oriented and characterized by open channels of communication. Develop an active internal market for new ideas in your organization. Ideas can come from customers, suppliers, employees, contractors and more. Recognize and reward ideas but test them on the basis of necessity, practicality and commercial feasibility. Replace blamestorming with brainstorming.

Ideas for Getting the Most from Your People Dont think merely in terms of reward and punishment. Think in terms of motivation and encouragement. Half of a persons motivation comes from within but the rest comes from the environment and circumstances. The leader is tremendously important and should also:

Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

Remember Maslows hierarchy of needs. Usually, once a person has satised a lowerorder need the most effective motivation is often satisfaction of a higher-order need. According to the Theory Y management concept, organizations have a vast unexploited reserve of intelligence and creativity. Good leaders can tap this wealth. Offer people a challenge, respect them and give them room to work. Hire people who get their thrills from a job well done, not just from cash or benets. Be enthusiastic, committed, energetic and honest if you want your people to be. Treat each person as a unique individual. Be sensitive to individual needs and wants.

Ideas for Communicating Listening is an important part of good communication. Hear what people are saying, not what you expect them to say. Interpret and evaluate what they tell you. Usually people say more than words express. Think, and after reection, make an appropriate response. Also:
Effective speakers are clear, simple, colorful, natural, relaxed, brief and well prepared. Before giving a presentation, think about the message, the audience and the space. Prepare your presentation and rehearse it until you have it down pat. Then, relax and feel at ease to improvise.

About The Author

John Adair is a leadership and management expert. He is the author of more than 30 books. He is a visiting professor at the University of Exeter.

John Adairs 100 Greatest Ideas

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