12 disciplines of Leadership Excellence
Published on August 12, 2020
By Dr. Peter Chee & Brian Tracy
John Maxwell asserts that leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less. Effective leaders influence followers so that they collaborate with the leaders because they want to and not because they have to.
Influencing competencies are indispensable to delivering both personal and organizational results. In almost every interaction with other people, you will find the need to influence and persuade them to buy-in to your ideas, your products, or services. Within modern-day organizations, where structures are getting less hierarchical, working with peers and superiors towards common goals will require your skills to persuade, influence, and inspire them to commit to the common goals.
This ability to positively influence is an essential quality of successful people. Leaders and managers with influencing competency will consistently deliver improved results through better working relationships and higher productivity.
The Disciplines of Leadership Excellence
1. Discipline of Collaboration
Leaders ensure that people work well together in synergistic teams and are aligned with the unity of vision, values, and objectives. They create a positive and fun culture of cooperation among their people. They hire and retain the best people, and they enable participative leadership, employee engagement, and strategic partnerships.
2. Discipline of Clarity
Leaders take the time to become absolutely clear about their values, vision, mission, purposes, goals, strategies, tactics, priorities, strengths and passion in every part of the business, and in personal life. They communicate clearly and effectively with people.
3. Discipline of Control
Leaders practice high levels of self-mastery and self-control in their actions and interactions with others, and both take charge and remain in charge of the situation. They are willing to make sacrifices for the good of their people.
4. Discipline of Character
Leaders practice honesty and integrity in everything they do, making promises carefully, but then keeping their promises. They passionately build trust among their people with a strong sense of ethical quality and humility
5. Discipline of Competence
Leaders never stop upgrading their knowledge and skills through continuous reading, listening, watching, and learning on every occasion. They work very hard to become extremely good at what they do and are dedicated to continuous improvements. They cultivate the same philosophy of continuous learning and development with their people.
6. Discipline of Competitiveness
Leaders are highly competitive and are determined to succeed by marketing and selling better products and services, aggressively in any market. They are customer-centric and have strong strategic acumen in creating a competitive advantage to win over their competitors.
7. Discipline of Creativity
Leaders spend most of their time finding solutions to problems. The ability to deal with difficulties will, more than anything else, determine what happens in your career. Those with poor creativity are always delegated to working for those with strong creative thinking skills.
8. Discipline of Courage
Leaders demonstrate courage by moving out of their comfort zones, being willing to embrace adversity, make tough decisions, and take risks with no guarantee of success.
9. Discipline of Caring about People
Leaders recognize that their people are their most important assets and that kindness, courtesy and consideration are essential to bringing out the very best in the people who work for them. They are servant leaders that touch the hearts of people with care and sincerity while adding value to them.
10. Discipline of Change Management
Leaders are expected to handle the challenges of change more cleverly than everyone else. In this VUCA world, change is inevitable and mostly unpredictable. The better you can deal with changes in your business and personal life, the greater your contribution will be, and the more valuable you will be to the organization.
11. Discipline of Concentration
Leaders manage their time well, set clear priorities on the use of time and resources, and concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time. They use the power of focus to do the right thing at the right time and to leverage their strengths to achieve sustainable success.
12. Discipline of Commitment
Leaders are fully committed to the achievement of goals, winning, and the success of their businesses or departments. They have a strong sense of responsibility and determination to achieve results.
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