Improve Your Leadership And Management Skills Essay

Have you ever thought that leading and managing is an easy job? Well, it is not. Many different characteristics, continual training, and knowledge of the people you are leading are all very important to be a successful leader. In the book, How to Improve Your Leadership and Management Skills, it teaches us that there are many different aspects of being an effective leader. The first thing: how do you lead? Sounds very simple, however it is anything but. Next, you need to know how to deal with and manage change. Lastly, how to deal with difficult employees is necessary to improve your leadership and management skills. There are many, many different ways to lead and manage employees; however, there are only a few ways to do it effectively. One …show more content…
The only constant, is change. Whether it is a policy or a procedure, you will have to introduce change at some point to your employees. Again, there are different way to manage change, but per the book, there is only a few effective ways lead through change. The first thing is that you have to fully accept the change yourself before you can expect others to accept it. To accept change, you must first view it as an opportunity to make things better and not as a burden. Once you have accepted the change, viewed it as something good instead of something bad, you must them remove all interruptions from your life that would hinder making this change great. This includes naysayers in your ear, telling you have crazy and outlandish the change is. You have to develop and maintain a strong network that will have allow you introduce the change and give you constructive feedback. It is also helpful to keep a daily journal as you navigate through the change. This is helpful for when the next change is implemented, it will serve as reference as what to do and what not to do this time around. Continual education on your part will prove to be invaluable. You will know the latest updates, will be able to speak the changes to your employees intelligently, and will be able to answer questions of hesitation without saying “I’ am not sure; let me get back to you on …show more content…
People come from different educational backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnic background. That being said, you will be leading people with different kinds of believes, and ways of doing things. Sometimes, those people will be very difficult to manage because they feel the way they are doing things are right and they will not want to change their ways. The very first thing to do when you are managing a difficult employee is to research to see if there is a history of the behavior. See when the behavior started and then maybe you can figure out why the behavior started. At that junction, it will be easier to devise a plan to end the behavior. You also want to look at who is at fault for the behavior. It may not be that difficult employee. It just might be you! Have you been so hands off that you did not notice what was going on under your leadership? Did you know about the behavior, but decided not to do anything about it? You want to clarify all this information prior to addressing the difficult employee. They will already be on the defensive, trying to defend his or her actions. You want to make certain that the facts you are bringing to the table are accurate. Do not give the employee a “one-up feeling”, meaning they were able to prove you wrong on one point, as it will be even harder to pull them back into line. Lastly, in dealing with a difficult employee, you want