Author: Jim O'Connor

On Becoming Professionally Effective

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS, RESILIENCE, CONFIDENCE AND SELF MANAGEMENT SKILLS One of the most important attributes of highly successful professionals is their ability to be effective in a wide variety of situations. Whether the situation is simple and uncomplicated or complex and serious, your ability stay composed and navigate the situation effectively depends on your Read More …

HOW TO BE PERSONALLY EFFECTIVE IN AN INTERPERSONAL WORLD

IN THE LAST POST I hear these kinds of questions in my consulting practice all the time. Isn’t it all just a matter of nose down, bum up push and go? How do you manage up, or manage really difficult people? What do you do when the proverbial crisis hits the fan? How can I Read More …

The Secret of Why in Leadership

This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

IN THE LAST POST We examined the importance of having clear intentions and motivations.  Intentions and motivations underpin the important question of why, or more to the point why bother.  If your motivations aren’t sufficient you simply wont bother, if your intentions aren’t important enough you won’t bother. Nor will the people you want to Read More …

“Why” – The Foundation of Great Leadership

This entry is part 9 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

Why you lead informs every decision and every action you make. It’s reasonable to say then understanding your motives matters. Armed with a clear understanding of why you lead means you will always know your leadership purpose and direction. At the very least clearing up your intentions and motives will have give you a certainty that builds confidence, clarity and composure in the often difficult and confusing task of leading. Without understanding why you lead you may become, indecisive, unclear and ineffective at critical moments. Clarity matters!

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The “What” of Leadership

This entry is part 8 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

Leaders must begin the process of organising by organising their own resources. There are many reasons why it is fundamental to a leader’s power, authority, and influence that the leader organises themselves. Common sense would have you understand that a mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically and materially disorganised leader is going to be a poor leader.

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A Simple Definition

This entry is part 7 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

I’m going to quickly explain leadership beginning with a simple definition and then slowly expand that definition from its most rudimentary form, through to its more complex. Finally I am going to end by defining great leadership.

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The Foundations Of Great Leadership

This entry is part 6 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

The problem in understanding great leadership is not whether one pole or the other of the leadership spectrum is right or wrong. That debate is a distraction from the central question of what great leadership is. The challenge of leadership is not a problem of deciding which is the best ideology. We now have more than enough evidence to conclude that ideologically based leadership strategies may be appealing but often have fatal flaws in them. Simply because no ideology is capable of encapsulating all the various circumstance that a leader will be confronted with in their lifetime.

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The Limits of Leading from the Front Part 2

This entry is part 5 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

Here are some other more common every day traps for the visionary leaders. They often don’t take people with them on the journey and expect their followers to just get it? Typically they are poor communicators and or overly bullish and don’t understand why the lead to follow. They may have a brilliant idea but they fail to inspire hope. They fail to message correctly. They may fail to engage in the pesky problems of having to communicate with the people they want to lead. Often a potentially brilliant vision is simply not thought out well enough and crumbles under the weight of scrutiny.

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The Weakness of Leading From the Front Part 1

This entry is part 4 of 10 in the series Understanding Great Leadership

Why does the visionary have so much power over our desire to follow you might ask? Well the answer is simple enough; the human species loves to aspire to better things and anyone who offers the hope of a better life is already ahead on the attractiveness scale. But the central reason the bringing of a better future is more effective than monarchistic/dictatorship rule is because the vision inspires hope and hope inspires engagement.

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