Free Chapter - Professor M.S.Rao’s Award-Winning Book “Secrets of Your Leadership Success – The 11 Indispensable E’s of a Leader”

Dear friends,

Here is the sample chapter of my award-winning book, “Secrets of Your Leadership Success – The 11 Indispensable E’s of a Leader” Here is the link to buy this book: http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Your-Leadership-Success-Indispensable/dp/1619030381 I appreciate your kind review on Amazon. Also, I appreciate your comment and share with your connections. 

“There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that once unleashed can make any vision, dream, or desire a reality.” - Anthony Robbins

Success and leadership are closely connected; success is contagious breeding confidence among the people and paving the way for undertaking leadership roles and responsibilities.  It encourages successful people to transform as leaders and develop others also as leaders. John Maxwell outlines 5 Levels of Leadership where success in one position leads to successive higher positions in leadership thereby contributing to individual and group development. It appears similar to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs where after accomplishing a particular set of needs, people search for accomplishment of next higher needs. According to Maxwell, there are 5 levels of leadership such as position, permission, production, people development and pinnacle. In the first level of position, people follow you as you are designated and successful. In the second level of permission, people follow you as they are convinced about your credentials, success and leadership.  In the third level of production, people follow you as you have done something for the organization.  In the fourth level of people development, people follow you as you have developed others as leaders. Finally, in the fifth level of pinnacle, which is the tipping point, people follow you as you symbolize and represent true leadership. We will now discuss about success before outlining about leadership and John Maxwell’s blueprint for achieving leadership success.

We Have Everything within Us

Everyone craves for success.  However, success comes at a cost. Success comes when you sweat hard in trenches.  Success comes when you struggle when the rest of the world sleeps.  Success comes when you sacrifice.  Success comes when you don’t give up.   Success comes when you lead from the front. 

Why do some people succeed while some fail in their lives? It is very simple. People fail because they make mistakes and don’t rectify them.  In contrast, some people succeed because they know the right tools and techniques and secrets and strategies to succeed. Successful people work harder, smarter and wiser with passion, perseverance and persistence.

Some people don’t realize their hidden potential.   When they realize their hidden potential, it is too late.  Some people don’t try at all to succeed as they get complacent with what they have and where they are. Some people try and fail, and don’t try again. The truth in life is that there are no failures, but only lessons.   Remember we all have huge potential within us.  Wilma Rudolph rightly said, “Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” 

Everything is there in our minds. We must break our mental barriers and limitations. At times, people are beset with their preconceived mindset which might have developed due to their past failures or setbacks. At times, the pre-conceived mindset may become a bottleneck for further endeavors.

What is Success?

Success means different things to different people. For some people, success means making money.  For some people, success means achieving the impossible. For some people, success means breaking the records and getting recognized by others. For some people, success means acquiring and applying knowledge.  And for some people, success means living with peace and harmony.  In fact, success means bridging the gap between aspirations and accomplishments.

Success can be defined as setting goals, working smart, persisting with efforts, managing external forces and factors, and aligning yourself towards goals and, finally, accomplishing your goals. It involves realizing and unlocking your potential.  Success is all also about giving what others want rather than giving what you have. At times, people may not appreciate what you have but they do appreciate when you can give what they want as people have different expectations.  Knowing their expectations and delivering as per their aspirations will take you towards success.

John C. Maxwell mentions in his book Attitude that most people have a vague picture of what it means to be a successful person; it looks something like this:

The wealth of Bill Gates,

The physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger, (or Tyra Banks)

The intelligence of Albert Einstein,

The athletic ability of Michael Jordan,

The business prowess of Donald Trump,

The social grace and poise of Jackie Kennedy,

The imagination of Walt Disney, and

The heart of Mother Teresa.

However, Maxwell says that comparing with others is not success.  You are unique and God created you with a purpose.  Try to be yourself.  Acquire success by banking on your skills and abilities.  He reveals the success story of Erma Bombeck who shot to fame from newspaper copy girl to Time Magazine cover girl in his book Attitude; he states:

For slightly more than thirty years, Erma Bombeck wrote her humor column.  During that time she published fifteen books, was recognized as one of the twenty-five most influential women in America, appeared frequently on the television show Good Morning America, was featured on the cover of Time magazine, received innumerable honors (such as the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor), and was awarded fifteen honorary degrees.

But during that span of time, Erma Bombeck also experienced incredible troubles and trials, including breast cancer, a mastectomy, and kidney failure.  And she wasn’t shy about sharing her perspective on her life experiences.

Sun Tzu and Success

“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star... you will still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard, and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” - Terry Prattchet

Every human being wants to be liked and appreciated by others, and the same has been said by William James,   “The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.”  And it drives people to strive for success throughout their lives. It fires their enthusiasm.  It forces them to follow uncharted paths.  It compels them to go to any extent.   However, very few people realize their goals and achieve success while the majority fail and fall aside in their race towards success. 

When you blend your inherent talents with various permutations and combinations, you create more new talents.  When you combine these talents with the skills that you acquire through reading, training, observation, learning and practice, you can achieve your leadership success. 

Achieving Success

When you pursue your passions, you can achieve success.  When you spot your talents and develop, you can achieve success.  When you emphasize more on your talents than on skills, you achieve your success.  When you don’t follow the crowd and do things differently, you achieve your success.  Hence, achieving success is easier said than done.  However, knowing what it takes you towards success makes the journey interesting and easier.

People often acquire several skills and abilities ignoring their inherent talents thus struggling for success throughout their lives.  What is needed is to spot what you are strong at and exploit the same.  In the process, you can acquire skills and abilities that must revolve around your talents so that you can reach the destination of success easily. Unfortunately, people do things the other way round; they try to acquire skills and abilities and ignore their precious God-gifted talents.

Success and Potential

When you want success, you need to unlock your potential.  Both potential and success go together.  Higher the attempt to unlock the potential, higher the rate of success!  We all have huge potential.  However, we fail to identify, explore and exploit.  As a result, our potential lies hidden and dormant. As author Henry Drummond says, “Unless a man undertakes more than the possible can do, he will never do all he can do.”  Hence, it is essential to stretch and grow and unlock your potential in order to achieve success.  You can take a leaf from the examples of leaders who continuously learned and unlocked, and achieved amazing success.

Tips to Unlock Your Hidden Potential

Winston Churchill said, “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.” Unlocking your hidden potential helps you boost your self-confidence and self-esteem culminating into your leadership success.  Here are the tips to unlock your hidden potential:

• Believe in yourself.
• When others can do, why not you?
• Apply focused and sustained efforts and energies as that would unlock your hidden potential automatically.
• Work hard, smart and wise to tap your hidden potential.
• Don’t compare yourself with others as it equals to insulting yourself. However, you can compare your achievements with yourself to check your progress and growth regularly.
• Blend your inborn talents with cultivated skills and abilities to tap your potential.
• Share your knowledge with others as knowledge grows when shared.

Michael J. Gelb reveals the research findings that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius.  Therefore, we need to break our mental barriers and limitations to strive towards success. There are no dull people in this world. All are active people. But few people keep their mental faculties lying dormant. At times, people are overconcerned about their weaknesses more than strengths. Hence, it is vital to see the door that is opened rather than the door that is closed.

What is Leadership?

"Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." - Peter F. Drucker

Anything about leadership inspires all. There are a number of articles on leadership across the world. It is very interesting to note that people love to read about leadership. Leadership is neither a task, nor a title but a way of life! Leadership is not a badge of honor, but a job with responsibility.  Leadership is not a popularity contest but involves coping with challenges and changes.   It is the process where you get other people to follow you and to do voluntarily what you want them to do.

You can handle machines easily.  But you cannot handle men easily as it involves emotions and egos. Here comes the role of leaders who get things going as per their visions and convictions.  Leaders have the uncanny ability to take their followers to uncharted paths.  They are passionate about their people and goals.

Leadership is the ability and capability to lead from the front despite stiff opposition and obstacles. Leadership is the action where people have to be brought under one platform towards a common cause or goal.

Leadership is all about setting the goals, influencing the people, forming teams based on competencies and qualifications and strengths and weaknesses.  In this process, a leader motivates the people by allaying their apprehensions, if any, and aligns their energies and efforts towards achieving organization goals.   

In case of success the leader says, “We achieved success because of the team behind me” and in case of failure, the leader says, “It is me who is responsible for the failure”. Precisely, a leader spreads the fame in case of success and takes the blame in case of failure.

John C. Maxwell’s Leadership Success 

John C. Maxwell has been ranked as the number one leadership guru in the world. Let us find out how he has made it to the top.  Maxwell has been passionate about personal growth for most of his life.  He wouldn’t have achieved any of his dreams had he not been dedicated to continual improvement.  He reveals, “If you want to influence others, you must always lead yourself first. If you can’t, you have no credibility.”  He unfolds his leadership success in his book Developing the Leaders Around You as follows:

Every good piece of information a person finds needs to be processed and filed. He has used this system for more than thirty-five years.  As he finds good articles or quotes, he clips and files them.  This has two advantages.  First, whenever he needs materials for a talk or seminar, he has thirty-five years of collected resources to draw upon.  Secondly, each time he reduces an article down to its one most relevant sentence or paragraph, he has processed through all the information, digested it, summarized it, and learned it. 

Each time you learn something new, it’s good to ask yourself, “Where, when, and how can I use this?” He prefers to do more than simply make a mental connection with the things he learns.

• Select one thing each week that he has learned.
• Put it on a 3 x 5 card. (He keeps it in front of him for a week.)
• Shares it with his wife.
• Shares it with someone else within twenty-four hours.
• Teaches it to someone else. (He puts it in a lesson.)

He further suggests that a daily discipline pays dividends.  Here is the weekly plan that he recommends at his conferences:

Monday: One hour with God

Tuesday: One hour listening to a leadership tape.

Wednesday: Another hour with the same tape (including time filing notes on highlights and reflecting on what has been learned)

Thursday: One hour reading a leadership book.

Friday: Another hour with the same book (including time filing notes on highlights and reflecting on what has been learned)

The 11 Important Keys to Your Leadership Success

There are 11 secrets to your leadership success.  They are more than secrets; in fact, they are 11 keys to your leadership success.  These keys are 11 E’s that are the surefire ingredients for effective leadership.  They help you unlock your hidden leadership potential and make you an effective leader.   They are Example, Energy, Enthusiasm, Endurance, Emotional Intelligence, Eloquence, Empowerment, Effectiveness, Execution, Excellence and Ethics. We will discuss these 11 E’s succinctly, which are the keys to your leadership success

Example

“Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.” -  Edmund Burke

Leadership success starts with the first key - Example. When we look at leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa, what made them stand out from others is setting an example for others.  These leaders practiced what they preached throughout their lives. They have left deep imprints on mankind.

Energy

The second key to your leadership success is Energy. Every leader must demonstrate high energy levels. Energy does not mean physical energy alone. It includes mental, emotional and spiritual energy. When we look at leaders like Genghis Khan, Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama, we find them radiating a lot of energy.  Only when the leaders are energetic they will be able to energize and influence others.

Enthusiasm

The third key to your leadership success is Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is all about interest towards one’s own area of activity.  It sounds like passion, but it is different from passion. Enthusiasm is contagious. Bo Bennett rightly said, “Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.”

Endurance

“Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees” - J. Willard Marriott

The fourth key, Endurance is the ability to survive shocks and setbacks. It is a state of being unruffled and undeterred when problems crop up due to external forces and factors.  Leaders should not give up just because of a few setbacks.  They need to demonstrate endurance at all times to motivate their followers.  Alexander the Great demonstrated amazing endurance by conquering the world at the age of 32.  Samuel Adams, one of the founding fathers of America, and Sir Earnest Shackleton, the explorer, are great examples of endurance. 

Emotional Intelligence

The fifth key to your leadership success is Emotional Intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others.  Emotional intelligence involves listening to others, picking up the hidden data of communication, acknowledging others’ perceptions and managing people’s egos and emotions.   It is the ability and the intelligence to manage the behavior of divergent individuals in a group. Research reveals that 80 percent of your leadership success depends on emotional intelligence.

Eloquence

Eloquence is the sixth key to your leadership success. Eloquence involves making the speech comprehensible to all audiences.   Eloquence is about being persuasive, fluent and elegant in your speaking.  Eloquence is articulating your ideas, insights and thoughts with others at ease.  It is one of the surefire ingredients of effective leadership.  When you look at leaders like Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, Swami Vivekananda, Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt, Adolph Hitler, Martin Luther King and John F Kennedy, it is very clear that they were all great orators who have left deep imprints even after their death through their eloquence.  

Empowerment

The seventh key to your leadership success is Empowerment.  Empowerment means giving powers to your people and encouraging them to act independently so that they can learn by trial and error and build their confidence levels. It builds confidence and develops competence in them. Over a period of time followers can also excel as leaders.   When you empower others it indicates that you have confidence in them. It shows that you have trust in others. As trust begets trust, empowering others elevates you as a leader.

Effectiveness

”Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” - Peter Drucker

Effectiveness is the eighth key to your leadership success. Effectiveness is all about being qualitative in applying your efforts and energies.  It is rightly said that managers are efficient and leaders are effective.  It means being thorough in planning and execution thus minimizing mistakes.  It is a kind of qualitative and smart work.  In brief, effectiveness is all about doing right things rather doing things right.

Execution

“I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management” – Jamie Dimon

The ninth key to your leadership success is Execution.  Execution is a systematic method of exposing, understanding and appreciating the ground realities and acting accordingly.  It is a kind of mission to roll out.  It helps translate vision into reality. It is the link between strategy and reality.  It closes the gap between the vision and outcomes.  Every leader must possess this ingredient to enhance his/her effectiveness.

Excellence

Excellence is the tenth key to your leadership success. Leaders must excel in their areas in order to command respect from their followers.  Excellence should not be confused with perfection.  Excellence means being the best.  Leaders like to be at their best and they constantly strive for delivering the best results.

Ethics

“The mind of the superior man is conversant with righteousness; the mind of the mean man is conversant with gain.” - Confucius

Last, but not the least, and the eleventh key to your leadership success is Ethics. When leaders possess all the ten E’s and fall short of this eleventh E, they get into an abyss.  The recent global financial turmoil is due to dearth of ethics at the corporate world.  Hence, ethics are the backbone of leadership success and effectiveness as it builds trust and confidence in others.  

References

Author’s Vision 2030: http://professormsraovision2030.blogspot.in    

Author’s Amazon URL: http://www.amazon.com/M.-S.-Rao/e/B00MB63BKM

Author’s LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/professor-rao/34/11a/b52  

Author’s You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/profmsr7  

Author’s Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/+ProfessorMSRao  

Author’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professor-MSRao/451516514937414

Author’s Company Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/MSR-Leadership-Consultants-India/375224215917499

Author’s Speakerpedia: http://speakerpedia.com/speakers/professor-msrao

Author’s Blogs:

http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com 

http://professormsrao.blogspot.com 

http://profmsr.blogspot.com