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    Elements of Leadership
    Elements of Leadership
    Elements of Leadership
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Elements of Leadership

    By J. L. Cearley

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    About this ebook

    Leadership tends to remain an undefined quality to most managers. We see people with leadership abilities and often refer to them as having leadership skills. Yet, in most personnel meetings, leadership is mostly discussed as a singular skill that one either possesses or not. In the process of selecting personnel for advancement in management, the most common approach is to cherry-pick those who look and act most like us, or someone who matches our paradigm of a leader.

    This book attempts to break down leadership into teachable skill sets that can be practiced and honed to improve your leadership abilities. It is designed in individual elements to allow you to focus on one area at a time for more effective learning.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLifeRich Publishing
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    ISBN9781489700414
    Elements of Leadership
    Author

    J. L. Cearley

    In 2000, Johnny began to reflect on his experience as a supervisor and manager. He remembered countless personnel evaluations and development meetings in which personnel were evaluated to determine if they possessed leadership skills. Even though the term “skills” was used in discussions, it was still treated as a singular skill that one did or didn’t have. Johnny began identifying and enumerating the individual skills that comprised leadership in industry today. He initially used this model to mentor young supervisors and managers before retirement in 2005. His hope is to share this model of leadership to help young managers get an early start honing leadership skills. After a career in the petrochemical industry, Johnny moved back to the San Antonio area with his wife, Janett.

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      Book preview

      Elements of Leadership - J. L. Cearley

      Copyright © 2007, 2013 Johnny Cearley.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      LifeRich Publishing books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      LifeRich Publishing

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.liferichpublishing.com

      1 (888) 238-8637

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4897-0040-7 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4897-0041-4 (e)

      LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 11/12/2013

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction

      Leadership Model

      What to Do

      Element 1   Personal Vision

      Element 2   Effective Communication

      Element 3   Be a Boundary Manager

      Element 4   Create Personal Empowerment

      Element 5   Make it Happen

      How to Do It

      Element 6   Practice Lifetime Learning

      Element 7   Make Heroes of Your People

      Element 8   Take The High Road

      Element 9   Think Synergistically

      Element 10   Take Care of Personnel Matters Expeditiously

      Element 11   Share Your Passion

      Element 12   Have Fun

      Element 13   Remain Calm in Crisis

      Conclusion—The Next Step The Next Step

      References

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      No attempt to write a book is done in a vacuum. Over the period of writing this one, there have been many who encouraged me and supported my efforts to make this possible.

      First and foremost, I want to thank the two women in my life who continue to give me a reason to want to help others—my mother Delrose and my wife Janett. Whenever I get discouraged, you are always there bolstering my spirit and giving me a reason to do more. My life has been blessed from birth by a woman who is the most spiritual person I know. In addition to her belief in God and in herself, she has always made me feel that I was special and capable of doing anything, as long as it was for good and was done right. She helped me to believe in myself from an early age. Then, the Lord blessed me with my darling wife, who always sees the best in me and supports me in a way that makes me not want to let her down. She is my soul mate and I cannot imagine life without her.

      During the early days of the formulation of this leadership model, I was blessed with the friendship of Nelson dos Santos and Beverly Clarkson, two of my managers who listened to my mentoring from the underlying concepts of this book with anxious anticipation. By their attention and desire to learn more, they affirmed my belief this work could be beneficial to others.

      Once the initial draft was completed, I had the good fortune to have several friends proofread it for grammatical errors. This help was beneficial, but their positive feedback and encouragement to proceed with publication was even more meaningful. For that, I need to acknowledge Quentin Baker, Doug Olson, Brooke Hildreth, Thane Cuevas, James Copeland, Lee Romain, and Steve Mack.

      May God bless each of you for your contributions and for believing in me.

      INTRODUCTION

      One day in 2000, I was reflecting on almost 29 years of experience in the petrochemical industry, and I asked myself, What had I learned working in two refineries and four chemical plants? What could I teach young supervisors and engineers that would keep them from repeating the mistakes of my past? What sense could I make of the countless revelations (Ah, Ha! moments) I had experienced and remembered? After all, in addition to learning from my mistakes and observing the mistakes and successes of others, I had read countless books about management theory, gleaning bits and pieces from each. However, I was frustrated by the lack of a single leadership model that brought all of this together.

      I soon realized that as much as we talk about it, leadership tends to remain an ambiguous commodity. And, we in industry tended to treat people as either possessing this rare commodity or not. We cherry picked those blessed with the inherent talents we desire and overlooked the rest. Seldom had I observed anyone attempting to teach leadership skills to people in their charge. I concluded that this had to stem from either our lack of understanding of what constitutes effective leadership or a belief that the skills could not be learned.

      So, I began to list those elements of leadership that could be learned. The first list only contained seven elements, but at least it was a start. Over the next few years, the list grew to 13 elements; some were things to do and some were how to do them.

      My next step was to use this list of elements as a model to teach these essential skills to people in my charge, those for whom I had the responsibility to develop. My initial attempt was not too successful. This was partly due to ineffective communication on my part and partly due to an unreceptive audience. However, with continued use I soon found that the list of elements could serve as an effective communication tool to provide other direct reports feedback on activities on a weekly basis. As my skill level increased with communicating these critical elements, they began to appreciate the counsel and actually encouraged me to provide more. Soon, I found that I was able to not only use the elements with direct reports, but also able to use them to guide members of other groups with whom I worked.

      That was when I realized this list of critical elements might be the basis for a book. My goal was to write a relatively short book (no longer than 100 pages) to encourage easy reading. I also wanted it to be structured so that specific elements were easy to access for an easy refresher on an individual basis.

      I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do believe the following captures at least 80% of the necessary

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