Thursday, February 18, 2010

More Leadership With The Marines part 2 by Max Garcia

Now, on to the next set of leadership characteristics. If you are a leadership speaker or anyone speaking at a seminar these 14 leadership characteristics or "traits" as the Marines call them will make great back drops for people to look at before and after you speak. Just exposing your lower level management and your hard charging employees to this material will breed motivational leadership where ever you work. The more people the better.

4) INITIATIVE - This one is pretty straight forward. If it needs to be done don't wait to be told, manager or employee.

5) Dependability...you may want to ask your leadership speaker to talk for a minute about this one. There is nothing more annoying than to tell your lower level managers to get something done only to be driving home wondering if they got it done. I like it when I have a manager I can depend on to the point where I do what I call "fire and forget". Like a missile that locks itself on to a target. You just hit the fire button and the machine does the rest. It is a great feeling when you tell someone to get something done and you just know you can consider it done. When I get the opposite kind of person I go from motivational leadership to authoritative style. In short, if I have to chase someone down and tell them to do something twice they are not getting the nice guy. If they show up late more than once in a long period of time, talk back, or wear a uniform that does not represent well, forget it, they will feel some heat and my motivational leadership style is out the window. I don't appreciate having to execute things on my "to do" list twice.

6) Our last of the leadership characteristics for today is Tact. Tact is also self explanatory but it's wide variety of meanings can make great guided discussions to get the audience to open up to a leadership speaker. Some people view tact as the leader having some respect when he talks to the subordinate. Others view this as the opposite, others think it means peers showing respect for each other. I personally think the most important meaning is that you can tell your boss what is on your mind, you can even tell him he is wrong. You just have to use tact or you will be the one who loses.

More to follow.....

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