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1.0 Introduction
It is clear that leadership and followership goes hand in hand, and leadership is
the ability to obtain followership. It is the ability to get others to accept and be
committed to the visions, missions, values and decisions made by the leader (Abdullah,
2016). We can say that, without followership, leadership does not exist. However, it is
believed that followership cannot be obtained as easy as some orders or invitation.
Followership can only be obtained for leaders that are equipped with matured and
developed people skills. According to Pat Williams (2013), people skills are the
learnable skills that enable a leader to understand the people he or she lead, to empathize
with them, and to build harmonious relationships with them. People skills are the social
skills that enable a leader to get along with people, to negotiate with people, to avoid
and resolve conflicts, and to interact with people in a mutually beneficial way. In this
paper, the various components of people skills with be described and analysed. Then,
the tasks that the leaders have to undertake in order to effectively lead and manage the
human resources of the organization with also be presented.
2. Be a Good Listener
Leaders should be a good listener because everyone has a need to be heard.
The most uplifting leader of all is a leader who listens. Listening for leader
does not mean just lending his or her ear, but to turn around and provide full
attention to what his or her followers are trying to articulate. Prophet
Muhammad P.B.U.H. will always turn himself directly to the person who
tries to talk to him. Besides that, leaders should always let the person know
that he or she is really listening. This could be done by giving eye contact,
nod empathetically, responding in such a way that the leader shows that he
or she is tracking and really hearing to what his or her follower says. Other
than that, more time allocated for listening also would provide leader extra
information and more detailed information on how the organization is
performing at lower levels.
However, if a leader is reprimanding his or her people for speaking
up or asking question. It would be devastating for him or herself and for the
whole organization. If a person found out that his or her voice is unwelcome,
the communication throughout the organization will be turned off. Just as
Pat William says: Information is the lifeblood of the organization, if that
lifeblood stops circulating, it is as if your organization has suffered a
massive heart attack. Keep the life blood flowing by being a good listener.
4. Delegate
Delegation is not as simple as assigning tasks for others to be accomplished.
Delegation represents the sharing of responsibilities with the followers. By
delegating, leaders will be able to utilize all strengths, talents, imaginations,
and energies of his or her followers. However, delegating to others require
trusts among the leader and follower as well. By entrusting and allocating
tasks and responsibilities to the follower, a leader could manage to
accomplish incredibly more than he or she could by him or herself. That
said, delegating does not mean leaving all the work for the subordinate to
be done and leaders will not be responsible or accountable for it. It does not
mean leaders abandoning their people or abrogate their responsibilities as a
leader. Leaders are still accountable for everything their followers do, and
they still need to maintain communication, set benchmarks, assess
performance, hold people accountable, and accept responsibility for both
and achievements and failures of the team and the tasks. In short, to delegate
is to create an environment where people are free to make mistakes, and free
to succeed, and is to unleash the talent and imagination of the followers. By
delegating, a person will be more of a leader than a boss.
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2.2 Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chees approaches of people skill
In this section, I would summarize the important elements of people skill
suggested by Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee in their book entitled 12 Disciplines of
Leadership Excellence: How Leaders Achieve Sustainable High Performance. They
centred the care of people on the element of motivation. They believed that motivation
will help to develop human capital and mobilize the human resources in an organization.
They also suggested that any inefficiency in an organization is due to lack of motivated
people, minimal focus on their work, and lack of urgency and direction to get their work
done. They believed that one of the roles of leader and manager is to maximize the
human capital and human resource of an organization and focus it on achieving the
most valuable and important results possible for the organization. More specific
approaches and methods to achieve such level of people skill are illustrated below
(Tracy & Chee, 2013):
1. Remove the De-motivators
The two major de-motivators in life and work are both factors that begin in
early childhood and carry forward into adult life. They are often referred to
as negative habit patterns or conditioned responses to stimuli.
a. Removing Fear of Failure (Making people feel safe)
Fear of failure is the greatest single obstacle to success and
achievement in ones life. It is very much due to destructive criticism
during a persons childhood that a person is afraid to make mistakes
and fear of challenging the status quo. Removing this fear of failure
will make people feel safe and people tend to perform and produce
at a higher level than ever before.
b. Removing Fear of Rejection (Making people feel important)
Fear of rejection also arises in early childhood when parents practice
conditional love on their children. The result of this would cause
the person becoming hypersensitive to the opinions, comments, and
feedback of others throughout his or her life. Encouraging these
people to try, to like themselves, value themselves, and consider
themselves to be worthwhile beings, they would be in the path of
removing the fear of rejection and the discovery of self-confidence.
2. Personality development
The self-concept is the believe structure or value system of the individual.
It is a composite of all the beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions of an
individual. It is the command centre that is located at the core of personality
and productivity, and governs individual performance, behaviour, and
output. The self-concept is made up of three components: the self-ideal, the
self-image, and the self-esteem.
a. Support Positive Self-Ideals
Being a summary picture of what the person aspires to be in life,
when self-ideals is influenced positively, individuals begin to
perform at higher levels.
b. Build Positive Self-Image
Self-image is the way a person thinks he or she is viewed by others.
Providing positive feedbacks on performance will improves a
persons self-image, and increases his or her ability and desire to
perform better.
c. Build Self-Esteem in Your People
Self-esteem is defined as how much you like about yourself. By
removing the fear of failure and fear of rejection, a high-self-esteem
environment can be created and the organization can receive higher
performance, lower absenteeism, lower employee turnover, higher
productivity, and fewer mistakes from the employees.
Challenge
ii.
Freedom
iii.
Control
iv.
Respect
v.
Success experiences
vi.
Positive expectations
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7. Effective Listening
Leaders are listeners. Leaders listen twice as much as they talk. It is because
listening has been called white magic due to its almost magical effect on
building up people and making them feel terrific about themselves. When a
leader listens to another person, he or she pay value to that other person
and make them feel important and worthwhile. The four keys of effective
listening, as suggested by Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee, are:
1. Listen Attentively
2. Pause before replying
3. Question for clarification
4. Paraphrase the speakers words and give feedbacks
3.0 Conclusion
As a conclusion, it is known that people skill is one of the most important skill
that a leader should learn and acquire. It is because of the importance of people in an
organization and to every leader. Without people, nothing can work. And without
people skill, people cant be attracted. Therefore, people skill can be said as the key to
a harmonious and healthy performance organization. In order to acquire people skills
and attract followers, scholars such as Pat Williams suggested that leaders should
maximize and optimize and make full use of agape love, while intellectuals such as
Brian Tracy and Dr. Peter Chee said that focusing on emotional aspects of individual
and motivating them can help to develop people skills.
References
Abdullah, A. (2016). Note 3: Leadership and Followership-Building Loyalty,
Commitment and a Sense of Membership.
Tracy, B., & Chee, P. (2013). 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How Leaders
Achieve Sustainable High Performance. McGraw-Hill Education.
Williams, P. (2013). Leadership Excellence. Shiloh Run Press.
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