Leadership Through People Skills (MGMT & LEADERSHIP) - Hardcover

Lefton, R. E.; Buzzotta, Victor

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071420355 ISBN 13: 9780071420358

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2003

Synopsis

A productive leader sees to it that people do their jobs with the skills and commitment needed to produce the best obtainable results at the lowest feasible outlay of money, time, and resources. The most successful leaders are experts at sizing people up, establishing two-way communications, creating environments that motivate greater productivity, and adapting their own behavior to different people and circumstances. The good news is that these "people skills" can be learned, practiced, and perfected.In "Leadership Through People Skills", the pioneers who developed the Dimensional Model of managerial behavior present a step-by-step procedure proven to help you build your people skills, practice them with understanding and insight, and become a more productive, more successful leader. You'll begin by analyzing the way you manage now, assessing the level of your existing people skills and improving them, and developing different leadership styles that you can use with direct reports, peers, and bosses. You'll learn how to communicate the benefits of any action your propose, create receptivity to your ideas, understand the concerns or objections of others, and respond to these concerns through improved presentation skills. Ultimately, with practice and determination, you'll put all of your newfound people skills to work coaching direct reports, working in tandem with fellow managers, and presenting new ideas to your superiors.Why bother learning and mastering people skills? Because the give you the most efficient and effective means available to accomplish your company's business goals; get ahead in your organization; increase your level of job satisfaction; and minimize on-the-job disputes, frustration, misunderstanding and confusion. Why choose this book as your guide? Because "Leadership Through People Skills" presents a proven model for improving your people skills that has already helped thousands of managers worldwide enjoy more productive, more successful, and more rewarding careers. Start building your people skills today and become the effective, successful leader you know you can be. Master the interpersonal skills that boost productivity. It's no secret that people skills are the key to leadership excellence, but developing these skills and learning to use them appropriately takes understanding and practice."Leadership Through People" skills introduces the Dimensional Model of managerial behavior, which is designed to sharpen your understanding of how people skills work and give you plenty of opportunity to practice them. In mastering the techniques and strategies you'll learn in this career-enhancing guide, you'll discover how to make yourself and everyone around you more focused, more efficient, and more productive. Like thousands of successful managers in leading organizations around the world, you'll learn how to use these skills in the right situations, at the right times, in the right ways with direct reports, peers, and bosses. You'll perfect your: sizing-up skills - interacting effectively through appropriate action; communication skills - strategies for finding out what others are thinking; motivational skills - giving people a compelling reason to do their best; and, adaptive skills - fitting actions to the people for whom they are intended.

About this title

About the Authors

Robert E. Lefton, Ph.D. is cofounder, president, and CEO of Psychological Associates and a leading authority in management and organization development.

Victor R. Buzzotta, Ph.D. is cofounder and chairman of the board of Psychological Associates and CEO of Dimensional Worldwide.

From the Back Cover

A productive leader sees to it that people do their jobs with the skills and commitment needed to produce the best obtainable results at the lowest feasible outlay of money, time, and resources. The most successful leaders are experts at sizing people up, establishing two-way communications, creating environments that motivate greater productivity, and adapting their own behavior to different people and circumstances. The good news is that these "people skills" can be learned, practiced, and perfected.

In Leadership Through People Skills, the pioneers who developed the Dimensional Model of managerial behavior present a step-by-step procedure proven to help you build your people skills, practice them with understanding and insight, and become a more productive, more successful leader.

You'll begin by analyzing the way you manage now, assessing the level of your existing people skills and improving them, and developing different leadership styles that you can use with direct reports, peers, and bosses. You'll learn how to communicate the benefits of any action your propose, create receptivity to your ideas, understand the concerns or objections of others, and respond to these concerns through improved presentation skills. Ultimately, with practice and determination, you'll put all of your newfound people skills to work coaching direct reports, working in tandem with fellow managers, and presenting new ideas to your superiors.

Why bother learning and mastering people skills? Because the give you the most efficient and effective means available to accomplish your company's business goals; get ahead in your organization; increase your level of job satisfaction; and minimize on-the-job disputes, frustration, misunderstanding and confusion. Why choose this book as your guide? Because Leadership Through People Skills presents a proven model for improving your people skills that has already helped thousands of managers worldwide enjoy more productive, more successful, and more rewarding careers. Start building your people skills today and become the effective, successful leader you know you can be.

Master the interpersonal skills that boost productivity

It's no secret that people skills are the key to leadership excellence, but developing these skills and learning to use them appropriately takes understanding and practice. Leadership Through People skills introduces the Dimensional Model of managerial behavior, which is designed to sharpen your understanding of how people skills work and give you plenty of opportunity to practice them.

In mastering the techniques and strategies you'll learn in this career-enhancing guide, you'll discover how to make yourself and everyone around you more focused, more efficient, and more productive. Like thousands of successful managers in leading organizations around the world, you'll learn how to use these skills in the right situations, at the right times, in the right ways with direct reports, peers, and bosses. You'll perfect your:

• Sizing-up skills: interacting effectively through appropriate action
• Communication skills: strategies for finding out what others are thinking
• Motivational skills: giving people a compelling reason to do their best
• Adaptive skills: fitting actions to the people for whom they are intended

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Leadership Through People Skills

By R. Lefton, Victor Buzzotta

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2004 Psychological Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-07-142035-8

Contents

Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 Leadership, People Skills, and You
Chapter 2 How You Manage Now
Chapter 3 Leadership Styles with Direct Reports
Chapter 4 Leadership Styles with Peers and Bosses
Chapter 5 The Behavior Mix
Chapter 6 What Difference Does It Make?
Chapter 7 Motivation
Chapter 8 Creating Receptivity to Your Ideas
Chapter 9 Probing
Chapter 10 Presentation Skills
Chapter 11 A Format for Q4 Interaction
Chapter 12 Coaching and Developing Direct Reports
Chapter 13 Q4 Strategies for Direct Reports
Chapter 14 Q4 Strategies for Peers and Bosses
Chapter 15 Teams and Teamwork
Chapter 16 Self-development
Appendix A Does the Dimensional Model Fit the Facts?
Appendix B Frequently Asked Questions About Q4 Leadership
Bibliography
Index

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Leadership, People Skills, and You

Rather than think of this as a book merely to be read, think of it as a resourceto be used in your role as a leader where you work. We hope you will startputting into practice the proven concepts we offer.

Simply stated, this book is intended to help you become a more productive leaderthrough the use of people skills. To do that, let's first define our terms.

A productive leader sees to it that people do their jobs with the skills andcommitment needed to produce the best obtainable results at the lowest feasibleoutlay of money, time, and resources.

People skills is an umbrella term for four related sets of abilities:

1. Sizing-up skills. Productive leadership requires the ability to a) observewhat people do in work situations as objectively as you can, and b) figure outwhy they do it, so that you can make sense out of what you see. This, in turn,helps you interact effectively with other people by selecting the appropriateaction from a whole range of actions you might take.

2. Communication skills. Sizing up is only the beginning. Once you've diagnosedyour own and other people's behavior, you must devise a communication strategyfor finding out what others think and for getting your own ideas across. Thisability to exchange ideas is essential to productive problem-solving anddecision-making, and both are necessary for productive leadership.

3. Motivational skills. It takes more than communication to get people to workproductively. It takes motivation — the creation of an environment inwhich people do what they're capable of because they have a compelling reason todo so.

Before they'll put themselves into their work, people want the answer to thequestion, "What's in it for me?" It will take your motivational skills toprovide the incentive that makes it worthwhile for them to tap into theirreserves of ability and energy.

4. Adaptive skills. Productive leaders relate to people as unique individuals.They don't deal with everyone in the same way. They vary their communication andmotivation techniques to meet the variety of people's needs. Therefore, the mosteffective leaders are creative. They shape their actions to fit the individualsfor whom they're intended.

So, along with the necessary technical skills (engineering, marketing,manufacturing, etc.) and administrative skills (planning, organizing,controlling, etc.), these are the people skills essential to productiveleadership.

Understand that most leaders have already learned some fundamental peopleskills. We call this using our common sense. If leaders weren't using commonsense skills, they wouldn't be able to carry out their assignments. We are notconcerned with creating all new skills from scratch, but with building on theseexisting ones.

However, developing better people skills takes both understanding and thewillingness to practice them. This book is designed both to enhance yourunderstanding of how people skills work and provide the opportunity to practicethem with judgment and insight. You'll be able to use people skills in the rightsituations, at the right times, and in the right ways.

360-Degree Leadership

One reason people skills are so important is that they help you work moreproductively with others at any level in your organization. With people skills,you can become a 360-degree leader.

Leadership, after all, isn't always from the top down. The people you must workwith to get things done aren't always direct reports. They can also be thepeople for whom you work and your peers. To function productively, you must beable to take effective action at all levels. People skills can help. Let's seehow.

1. Leading your direct reports. With people skills, you can do a better job ofdeveloping, coaching, and motivating your direct reports. You can overcome manyof the problems inherent in any top-down relationship — problems thatarise whenever power is unevenly distributed.

Perhaps most important, people skills can help you do a better job managing allkinds of employees. You probably have to deal with people who run the gamut frompushy to timid, from systematic to sloppy, from cocky to insecure. Your job, ofcourse, is to help each of them produce optimal results. You need a wide rangeof people skills that will work with any behavior in any circumstance.

2. Collaborating with your peers. With people skills, you can better coordinateyour efforts with those of your fellow workers. Here again, what counts isversatility — the ability to work with all types of people, from the co-worker who is easy-going and cooperative to someone who is fiercely competitiveand contentious. Like your direct reports, your peers differ in their attitudes,ambitions, and work habits. To work productively with all your peers, you needpeople skills.

3. Working with your boss. Finally, people skills will help you do a better jobof meshing your efforts with those of your boss. Whether he is a dogmatist whoknows all the answers, a loner who keeps people at arm's length, a "nice guy"who refuses to take charge, or some other variety of boss, you'll find it easierto deal with him if you use people skills. Like everyone else, bosses can bemanaged if you know how.

The importance of people skills becomes crystal clear when you consider two facts:

1. According to estimates, typical managers spend 70 to 80 percent of theirworking time in one-to-one interactions. This time is expended among directreports, peers, or bosses. Although teamwork is growing in importance, only one-fourth of their time is spent working in groups of more than two or bythemselves.

2. Our own extensive research and data from other sources reveal that many ofthe managers passed over for promotions are rejected primarily because theycannot handle people. It's their style — how they do something, ratherthan what they do.

These managers often have excellent technical and administrative skills.However, they lack the ability to size up, communicate, motivate, and adapt.Thus, the lack of people skills accounts for much of the disappointment andfrustration that many would-be leaders experience in their careers.

What's in It for You?

In light of this information, we can specify several reasons why you will profitfrom reading this book.

1. Achievement of objectives. Most important, people skills should help youattain your business objectives — the goals your organization expects youto reach. People skills make it easier to do what you're paid to do.

2. Tangible returns. If a lack of people skills is disqualifying other leadersfrom promotions, then mastery of these skills could help you get ahead in yourorganization, or at least help you reap tangible rewards. We're not suggestingthat people skills are all it takes to get ahead. We're saying that betterpeople skills, when added to solid technical and administrative abilities,frequently make the difference between standing still and moving forward.

3. Personal satisfaction. Whether or not you're strongly interested in tangiblerewards, people skills can provide a large measure of personal gratification.For example:

• The ability to work productively with a variety of people in many situationswill make you more confident and secure in your present job and less vulnerableto unforeseen and unpredictable events.

• Improved people skills will make your working relationships smoother and moresatisfying.

• Improved people skills can increase your influence in the organization andlead to more important leadership roles.

4. Personal productivity. Finally, improved people skills make it easier to doyour job. Disputes, frustrations, misunderstandings, confusion — you canlessen all of these by using the skills described in this book.

Concepts That Are Tested and Proven

Because we are making some impressive-sounding claims, you may be skeptical.What evidence proves that people skills can do the things we say?

We know that people skills work because we have seen them produce better resultsfor literally thousands of managers and leaders in hundreds of companies. Yousee, we are with Psychological Associates, a training organization that hasdeveloped and conducted training programs to help leaders master people skillsto improve productivity since the 1960s.

The concepts and people skills incorporated in our leadership programs are basedon the work of a broad spectrum of highly respected psychologists, communicationspecialists, management experts, and behavioral scientists. They collectivelyspent many years researching and applying these tested common-sense principles.In fact, by the time we began, a large body of research and empirical evidencehad proved that the skills described in this book actually work.

Our development program with people skills has found wide acceptance amongorganizations of many kinds, not only in the United States, but also in a numberof other countries in the Americas, Western Europe, Africa, and the Pacific Rim.They all wanted to improve productivity.

Every one of the thousands of leadership seminars our organization has conductedteaches the ideas and skills in this book. When put to the test back on the job,this training has been responsible for tangible business results. Theorganizations for which these leaders work have been the crucible in which thepeople skills proved themselves.

Thus, the evidence that the concepts in this book actually work comes from boththe scientific community and our own experience in teaching and seeing them putto use in the real world of work.

A Common Objection

Even with this kind of endorsement, some managers understandably still havedoubts about the usefulness of applying people skills in their own particularwork situations. They believe the way people are treated is determined by theirorganization, not by the individual leader. Therefore, it's pointless to learnpeople skills when the organization discourages or inhibits their use. This is afairly common concern.

Here is why we believe this misgiving is worth re-examining:

• Point 1. Although many organizations are specific about the results they want,they are often not nearly as specific about the methods leaders can use to getthese results. Obviously, they want their people to behave in a manner that isethical, legal, and consistent with their corporate image. However, results aretheir number-one concern. They want to increase productivity.

• Point 2. If people skills can help a leader get better results, why not givethem a try? You might find them to be a fully acceptable means of reaching thegoal of increased productivity.

• Point 3. In most organizations, leaders have considerable leeway in handlingpeople. In most interactions, they are not restricted to acting in only one waywith the people around them. If people skills can help you achieve the goals forwhich you are responsible, it's hard to imagine your organization would findfault with that!

• Point 4. Why would any organization object to the use of people skills whenthey contribute to better results?

It's Up to You

Ultimately, then, whether you try to improve your people skills is up to you. Inmost of your own one-to-one interactions, you are free to size up the otherperson's behavior, to communicate and motivate in a scientifically sound way,and to adapt your behavior to the other person's needs. You probably have morefreedom to practice people skills in the way you want than to do almost anythingelse.

Moreover, as you read further, you'll probably find the people skills werecommend that you try will meet your own test of common sense. Whether youexercise this tested common sense is up to you.

A Final Question

This brings us to a final and very important question: Can people skills belearned?

The question sometimes takes this form: Aren't people skills something that somepeople just naturally have and others lack? Although people vary widely in their"genetic temperament," no person is born with more people skills than another.Instead, plenty of people have learned and mastered them in the same way theymaster other skills — by learning the principles on which they're based,by practicing the skills diligently, and by getting sound feedback to make themwork even better.

As this book will demonstrate, there's nothing mysterious about people skills.As we said, they are just plain common sense that have been tested for validity.These skills shouldn't be confused with such vague, elusive qualities as"charm," "personality," or "charisma." People skills are techniques. They areways of doing things. As such, they can be learned.

If this book has an optimistic premise, it's this: Even though learning newskills is never easy, leaders are not locked into their present mode ofbehavior. People can learn to size up behavior, to communicate, and to motivate,and thereby to work more effectively with others as unique individuals.

A Look Ahead

With this introduction, we're ready to get more specific. In the next chapter,we'll look at ways you can evaluate your present leadership behavior. That willlay a foundation for determining how you can become an even more productiveleader.

CHAPTER 2

How You Manage Now

This chapter gives you the opportunity to size up the way you work with peopleon the job. If you think of this book as a journey to reach more productiveleadership, it makes good sense to know where your starting point is. This willgive you a fix on your present leadership location.

Some Preliminary Thoughts

Most of this short chapter is a series of statements to help you size up the wayyou manage direct reports. Although we said this book is about 360-degreeleadership, to keep the statements short and convenient, this chapter focusesonly on managing the people who report to you.

The assumption underlying the profile, and this entire book, is the likelihoodthat you are already a productive leader. If you weren't, you probably wouldn'tbe in your present job. As a rule, leaders who are most eager to improve arealready effective and want to get better. The statements will help you determinehow you currently conduct yourself. That way, you can build on your presentpeople skills to become even more productive.

The leadership style profile only gives a rough idea of how you interact withdirect reports. Even then, it may not be completely valid because it measureshow you see your behavior. It isn't always easy to be objective about your ownbehavior or to recognize what you do that diminishes your productivity. Ofcourse, the more candid you are, the more accurate the profile will be. Try tobe objective, but understand that the profile that emerges will be, at best,just a rough sketch.

When you finish the book, you may want to review the statements again. You mightcome up with a different profile, which is perhaps more accurate than the first.

This doesn't mean your first responses are a waste of time. By thinkingcarefully about each item as it applies to your day-to-day experience and bybeing as candid as possible, you'll have a profile of how you see yourself rightnow.

How to Complete the Profile

Page 12 contains statements that will help you size up how you manage yourdirect reports. Your responses will describe the way you interact with them.

Here's how to complete the profile:

1. Read each of the four paragraphs. While you read, compare them with your ownbehavior as a boss. The statements are extreme. Your own behavior may notcoincide exactly with any of the statements.

2. After reading the four paragraphs, distribute 100 points among them so thatthe points reflect the extent to which the paragraphs describe your behavior.The number of points you assign to any paragraph should be proportionate to howdescriptive that paragraph is of your behavior.

For example, if you think the first paragraph describes your behavior"perfectly" and the others don't describe it at all, then distribute points thisway: 100-0-0-0. However, this is unlikely. You'll probably see something of yourbehavior in several or all of the paragraphs. If so, your point distributionmight look like this: 10-30-30-30, 25-25-10-40, 60-0-10-30, or whatevercombination describes how you manage. Be sure your total adds up to 100 points.

3. Don't assign most of your points to what you consider to be the ideal or bestparagraph unless it really describes your behavior. Pick the honest answer, evenwhen it does not seem complimentary. What you want is a realistic portrait ofhow you interact with the people who work for you. There are no right or wronganswers, only more descriptive or less descriptive statements.

My Leadership Style

Your leadership style encompasses making decisions, setting objectives, givingfeedback, training, and gaining commitment.

—— 1. Most direct reports need prodding to do their jobs right. Theyrespect and respond to power, and to the fact that the boss can reward andpunish. I make sure my people know who's got the power. I make the decisions,and I set the objectives. I provide direct, forceful feedback, especially whensomeone's done something wrong. I insist that they do things in the way I woulddo them. As long as my direct reports know who's boss, they'll do what they'resupposed to do.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Leadership Through People Skills by R. Lefton. Copyright © 2004 by Psychological Associates, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0071420355
• ISBN 13: 9780071420358
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240