Why do some leaders flourish while others fail? Effective leaders positively influence the behavior of their followers, getting them to work toward shared goals. But leaders have different ways in which they characteristically influence others.
Research shows that assertive behavior improves individual and organizational performance. The ability to influence others is critical to anyone in a leadership or sales role, and enormously useful to just about everybody else. But people aren’t necessarily born assertive – it’s largely an acquired skill. And that’s good news for trainers.
Self-understanding is a necessary precondition for learning and growth. If managers or employees lack insight into their own personality traits, neither formal training nor on-the-job experience will enable them to reach their full potential. Blind to their own behavioral patterns, they will continue to trip over themselves in the same old ways.
Because the core processes of a business—ones that are responsible for creating end-products or services—cut across functions, the best and most efficient way to meet the customer’s needs is to improve the way in which people in these related functional areas work together. This collaboration enables the organization to accomplish goals and implement major change initiatives more quickly and with better quality than if each function operated as a separate “fiefdom.” Key to success in this environment is being able to work effectively with people across the organization, over whom one may have no authority.
Using a team approach to achieving organizational results is a methodology that has proven to be much more effective than the old-school approach of top-down, authoritarian management. However, there are downsides to the team approach that can be problematic in this increasingly fast-moving business environment. The greatest of these downsides include restricted communication, competition and even conflict between teams that actually hurts the overall organization.