The One Skill All Leaders Should Work On

If I had to pick one skill for the majority of leaders I work with to improve, it would be assertiveness. Not because being assertive is such a wonderful trait in and of itself. Rather, because of its power to magnify so many other leadership strengths.

Assertiveness gets a bad rap when people equate it with being pushy and annoying. But that shouldn't stop you from learning to apply it productively (that is — in service to your strengths). More harm is done when people aren't assertive enough than by being too assertive. At least you know what pushy people think, but those who don't assert themselves can be keeping vital ideas hidden and useless when they don't speak up or speak too softly. So I'd assert that when you are able to balance this critical skill with your other leadership abilities, you greatly amplify your power and impact.

Here are some specific ways in which assertiveness complements a wide range of the critical leadership skills you may already have:

• Creating a culture of innovation: A couple of years ago I conducted a study to determine the characteristics of the most innovative leaders in one of the largest companies in the world. One of their most powerful traits, their peers and direct reports told me, was their ability to push back on the hierarchy. These leaders were by no means rebels; rather, they were perceived to be fearless. Coupling assertiveness with their ability to foster innovation enabled them to take on difficult issues — to fight for resources for new projects or openly disagree with more senior managers about policy changes that could have severe unintended consequences. Being challenged required people to think more deeply to justify a course of action, which frequently produced much better ideas.

• Being customer focused: We typically think of service or business development professionals as being good at, and focused on, building relationships. But the most successful sales professionals, as Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson point out in their blog and their book, The Challenger Sale, are not the ones who build relationships. They're the ones who push back, challenging their clients to see problems they hadn't anticipated. Essentially, Dixon and Adamson's research finds, assertiveness creates more value for clients than conciliatory relationship building does.

• Fostering teamwork and collaboration: It might seem like assertiveness has little to do with the skills you need to be a team player. But teams thrive when their members are able to express their not-always-popular points of view. Excellent team players (who generally are already inclusive and able to defer to others) would improve considerably by learning when to assert such views. And team leaders who are assertive in creating a safe environment for less-popular opinions will make their teams all the stronger by increasing all team members' ability to participate fully.

• Leading change: Constructive change rarely happens passively. Change requires the leaders to challenge the status quo and find new ways of doing things to further organizational goals. It's nearly impossible to lead change without some measure of assertiveness because in most cases, even when change is generally viewed as positive, some kind of resistance still needs to be addressed.

• Acting with integrity: There are plenty of highly principled people who are too timid to speak up in meetings — to question a decision that appears to violate a corporate value or is otherwise not in the best interests of the organization. Assertiveness doesn't cause honesty or vice-versa, but when the two operate together they give people the courage not only to know what is right but to stand up for it as well.

• Creating a safe environment: This might seem self-evident — there are times when it's vital to speak up in the face of danger. And yet there are so many times when people don't, even in cases of life and death. The National Transportation Safety Board, for instance, has traced the cause of some plane crashes to co-pilots who were so deferential to their pilot in an emergency that they made suggestions too subtly. While most of us are not faced with life or death decisions each day, plenty of leaders are responsible for the safety of those they lead.

• Communicating effectively: Assertiveness adds power and conviction to a message and enables a leader's voice to be heard. You can clearly tell the difference between a message communicated with passion and vigor as a leader asserts his or her point of view and one that lacks the energy of conviction. Assertive leaders also tend to communicate more often, as their passion leads them to capitalize on every opportunity they can find to deliver a message.

Many leaders (though certainly not all) struggle with being assertive enough, whether through self-doubt, a lack of confidence, a fear of not being liked, or a host of other reasons. Most people who know me personally would probably say that I possess a reasonably strong level of assertiveness. Yet there are times (like when I'm with people whom I admire or whose opinion is particularly important to me) that I become relatively timid and less likely to assert my point of view. Ironically, when I review those situations, I recognize that they may be some of the most important times for me to speak up. 

 by Scott Edinger

Founder of Edinger Consulting Group

From: HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Why Great Leaders Are in Short Supply

We're living with something of an irony right now regarding leadership. On the one hand, the topic has never been more studied and written about; my recent Google search for leadership research by academies and institutes returned some 375,000 hits. On the other hand, we are experiencing a dearth of leadership in society. We see fewer prominent leaders who seem genuine and highly capable, and many who have been compromised, deposed, or defeated. Even more seem to have run out of ideas, or simply appear unable to craft the necessary consensus to lead. Perhaps it's really not so ironic that there would be this inverse relationship: the deeper we sink into leadership crisis, the more it shows up on the agendas of think tanks and conferences.

From my own perspective as someone who has had a front-row seat to leadership over a few decades, it isn't so much that today's leaders fall short of the capabilities or character leaders had in the past. It isn't that the visionary, principled, courageous type we would all prefer to follow was once common and is now a rarity. Rather, it's the context of leadership that has changed, so that people with just as great capability as their predecessors find it much harder today to lead. We could probably cite many factors that have contributed to this shift, but three are particularly important. As I see it, leaders in the past had the great advantages of:

Privileged access to information. People naturally look for direction from someone they perceive to be in possession of more information about an evolving situation. It used to be that leaders were in a unique position to gain information, and to dole it out on a need-to-know basis. Now the world is awash in instantly accessible information of all types and on all subjects. Human beings making ground-level observations can communicate them directly to others either around the globe or around the corner, while they walk down the sidewalk of an urban neighborhood or the dirt path of a remote jungle.

Is it any wonder that the Web became the greatest fear factor of every dictator? When even State Department communiques become public knowledge and, in almost any realm, an impassioned nobody can be in greater possession of the facts than a leader in that same realm, information is decoupled from leadership. In fact the flows of information actively undercut leadership—both the practice and the perceived need for it.

The reflected glory of their institutions. Twenty years ago, a citizen might not know the name of a Fortune 500 CEO or NGO director, but they knew the reputation of the institution—and made an assumption that the person chosen to lead it must personify its good qualities. Two things have changed that: it is much easier to see leader and institution separately, and there has been a significant decline in respect for the institutions themselves. Whether we're talking about multinational corporations, churches, or public treasuries, we are constantly reminded by Pew and Gallup that reputations now scrape the bottom. There is an increasing perception of incompetence, greed, and frivolity at the expense of the governed, the taxed, and the managed.

Are institutions truly less noble, or is it that they, as well as their leaders, are subjected to more relentless scrutiny? In my own years in the White House I vividly recall the media's clamoring for details about presidential habits and the daily life of the West Wing—only to find them all too ordinary and boring to report. Today the media churns out every minor indiscretion and then, in a rare act of community, the public blogs on it. Social media platforms give motivated critics, even lone voices, the ability to be heard. YouTube is a bargain-basement media buy for campaigning on any issue.

Whether it is a matter of perception or reality, we can only hope that respect for our institutions will rise again. Institutions are where we join together, worship together, convene, gather, assemble, debate, celebrate, where preachers preach and where leaders convince. When any of them loses respect, society loses a platform for concerted action. Potentially great leaders lose a platform for leadership.

Broadly shared foundational principles. One other foundation of leadership that used to be firmly in place seems shaken today: a common understanding of the age-tested principles, religious or moral, that should guide decisions. Leaders may be yet another victim of the move away from the teaching and practice of moral values and their integration in early family life. Interpersonal relations patterns start early and are almost impossible to change; taking a graduate school class in ethics may be too late for someone who has not had good character modeled for them and required of them from early childhood. Much is said today about the diminution of the "actions have consequences" school of hard knocks that may have built the best leaders.

Meridian International, which offers a gathering place and leadership training for diplomats and internationalists in Washington DC, has studied this problem. Its conclusion: "Trust in public and private sector leaders can only be restored when leaders align value-based decisions, not rhetoric, with basic aspirations such as security and economic opportunity."

* * * * * * * * *

Leadership has never been easy. But I suspect it was simpler in an era when leaders could count on superior information access, reverence for their institutions, and strong moral bearings to assemble greater followership. The conditions of the past help to explain why the WWII military personnel who performed so well in European, Pacific, and North African theatres returned home to become such competent leaders in industry.

Conditions have changed to make leadership harder. Spencer Stuart's Tom Neff, the dean of CEO Executive Search, puts it baldly: "We are experiencing a demand for new types of skills and sacrifices in C-level executives that many are not prepared to bring to the table."

Of course, the corollary is that great leadership capability has never been more valuable. Even as the accessibility of information makes it less necessary for a group to have a leader to inform, organize, and mobilize its action, the sheer glut of information makes it more vital for a leader to show how all the data add up to a meaningful narrative—to interpret and inspire. If institutional reverence cannot be assumed, it is a bigger part of the leader's work to engage hearts and minds. In an era when character is not a given, the leader who consistently displays integrity will have real impact. 

 by James S. Rosebush 

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Choosing Between Making Money and Doing What You Love

"If you're really passionate about what you do, but it's not going to make you a lot of money, should you still do it?"

What a great question! It seems like just about everyone who has ever addressed a graduating class of high school or college seniors has said "Do what you love, the money will follow."

Inspiring. But it is true? Couldn't you do what you truly care about and very well go broke, as the question above (recently sent from one of our readers) implies?

Based on the research we did for our book, we're convinced that when you're heading into the unknown, desire is all-important. You simply want to be doing something that you love, or something that is logically going to lead to something you love, in order to do your best work. That desire will make you more creative and more resourceful, and will help you get further faster.

And, it will help you persist. When you're trying something that's never been attempted before — beginning an unusual project at work, or trying to get a new business off the ground — you're going to face a lot of obstacles. You don't want to be giving up the first time you encounter one.

But, let's be real. None of this guarantees wealth, or even financial success.

A friend of ours was hanging out at a bar with a few fellow professional musicians after a recording session, talking admiringly about another musician they all know. One of them commented on how fortunate it was for this musician that his music was commercial. In those four words, you will find an enormous truth. We all have our music and there is no guarantee that anyone will buy it. Absolutely none. These are two entirely separate things.

So this reader question attacks us straight on and says, in essence, "I have the desire, but I am pretty certain it's not going to lead anywhere that's monetarily profitable. Now what? Should I still go ahead?"

Of course you should.

Now let's qualify the answer a bit:

If you can't afford to do the thing you're passionate about — for example, if you do it, you won't be able to feed your family, or it would keep you from graduating college (which is something you think is more important than whatever you're passionate about) — then no, you'd better not bet your economic life on it. A basic principle concerning how you should deal with an unknown future is that every small smart step you take should leave you alive to take the next step. So, make sure you attend to your lower order Maslow needs of food and shelter and the like.

But even this doesn't mean you can't work on your passion a little — even if it's just for 15 minutes a day.

And you should!

Why?

Research (such as The Power of Small Wins that ran in Harvard Business Review May, 2011) shows that people who make progress every day toward something they care about report being satisfied and fulfilled.

We're in favor of people being happy. And we're also in favor of provoking people into pursuing happiness. The nice thing about this reader's question is that it might get people who have — by any objective standard — more than enough money to reconsider whether they want to continue to do things that are not making them happy, just because it'll make them more money. More often than not, these people say, "Once I get enough money, I'll do what I really want to do. I won't worry about the money." But somehow, they never get to that point. Time is finite. The question might be enough to get you to reconsider how you're spending it.

And of course, the assumption embedded in the question could be wrong. You might, indeed, end up making money if you engage in your passion, even though you currently think you won't. Remember, the future is unknown. Who knows what people will buy, or what you might invent after your very next act. At any moment in time, you are only one thought away from an insight — an insight that can change everything.

As we said in our previous post, when you are facing the unknown, they only way to know anything for sure is to act. When you are dealing with uncertainty — and whether you are going to make any money from your passion at this point is definitely an uncertainty — you act. You don't think about what might happen, or try to predict the outcome, or plan for every contingency. You take a small step toward making it a reality, and you see what happens.

Who knows? Even the smallest step can change everything.

So take those small steps. You might discover that your passion does, in fact, make you money. After all, who knew you could make huge amounts of money figuring out a way to connect all your friends (Facebook) or make a better map (pick your favorite GPS tool).

Even if you don't, you want to spend part of your day doing at least one thing that's making you happy. Otherwise, something is terribly wrong.

 by Leonard A. Schlesinger, Charles F. Kiefer, and Paul B. Brown

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Free Coaching for IAS....

Dear Friends,

I am Felling happy to inform you about free coaching for IAS offered by the Sai dai durai swamy IAS Academy in Chennai.

It offers you free coaching, Material and Accommodation for more details see the link given below

Thank you to you all....

                            http://www.saidaiduraisamysmanidhaneyam.com/

Domestic Funding of Foreign Training (DFFT)

Hi friends…

This posting is not for getting into IAS, it’s about enlightening you how the civil service career progress will be, if you want to pursue higher studies. It’s always good for an officer to be highly qualified then only he may secured the most powerful and prominent post in Govt. of India in Finance, Defense, Industry, Commerce, Home minstery  alike.

IF you are an Indian officer looking for domestic funding of foreign training, here are the must-know facts. The following are the Frequently Asked Questions under the Domestic Funding of Foreign Training (DFFT) Scheme, as is provided by DoPT.

What is the DFFT Scheme?

Domestic Funding of Foreign Training (DFFT) scheme is a scheme introduced by the Government of India in 2001 with an objective to upgrade the knowledge and skills of the government officers and to provide exposure to international best practices by deputing them to different long or short-term training programmes.

Who is eligible?

The officers belonging to IAS, CSS and SCS are eligible to undergo foreign training under the scheme. Officers of the other two All India Services, viz., IPS and IFoS and those of other organized Group A Central Civil Services are eligible under the Scheme only when they are holding posts on deputation under the Central Staffing Scheme.

Where can I find the circular giving the terms and conditions?

The circular is issued every year and hosted on the website: www.persmin.nic.in

How and when can I apply?

The circular for training programmes to be conducted in a financial year (April to March) is generally issued in the month of October of the preceding year, e.g., for training programmes to be offered in FY 2011-12, the circular was issued in October, 2010.

Is there a common circular for the long term as well as the short term programmes?

Yes.

Which are the areas for long term and short term programmes sponsored under the DFFT

scheme?

The long term programmes are mainly in the fields of public policy, public management, public administration, etc. while the themes for the shor-tterm programmes are leadership, executive development, fiscal decentralization, tax analysis and revenue forecasting, project management, anti corruption, health sector reforms, public administration, public finance management, infrastructure and PPP, training of trainers, advance competencies for trainers, environmental policy issues etc. The specific programmes both long term and short term are included in the circular issued each year.

How are the selections made?

It is mandatory to apply online. A software based eligibility list is generated, followed by a merit list. Based on date available through these lists, a duly constituted committee recommends officers for long term and short term training programmes taking into account the relevance and suitability factors and takes approval of the competent authority.

Who bears the cost?

The entire cost on participation of officers in training programmes under the DFFT scheme is met by the training division, except certain pre departure expenses. A detailed circular dated 19^th January 2011indicating various entitlements is available in the website: www.persmin.nic.in.

Is the air travel also arranged by the DOPT?

Yes, the travel in the entitled class (on excursion fare basis) is arranged through Air India by the DOPT. For this purpose, vouchers are issued to the Air India office at Safdarjung Airport. The name and contact details of the concerned officers in Air India are intimated to the nominated officers who then get in touch with them and reserve tickets to their respective destinations.

Does nomination by DoPT guarantee admission to the programmes?

Not necessarily. The concerned institutes also have their own selection procedures which may sometimes reject the nominations made by DOPT.

How can I avail the partial funding under the DFFT Scheme?

The officers can avail financial assistance under the partial funding component for pursuing higher studies in programmes. The terms and conditions relating to the partial funding are contained in a circular dated 17^thMarch 2008.

When I can apply for the support under the Partial Funding Scheme?

The applications can be made throughout the year but only after securing admission in the chosen programme/ University. However, the period from April to June is ideal as most of the programmes commence in August/September.

If I fulfil all the eligibility criteria as per the Circular can I be sure to get the Partial Funding support from the DoPT?

DOPT administers the partial funding scheme. However, the Central Establishment Board is the final authority in the matter which may lay down its own criteria such as public interest, budget, etc. while deciding the cases of partial funding.

Source: http://www.babusofindia.com/search/label/DFFT