The Art of Leadership: Ideas and Inspiration for Effective Leadership

ISBN-13: 9783322895097 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 240 str.

Gerhard Zapke-Schauer

Opis

When I gave up my career as a professional manager fifteen years ago to start working as a lecturer at a college of management, I never supposed for a moment that there would be such a large need for know-how on leadership. This book is a collection of letters written between 2000 to 2003 to my clients on a variety of topics. In these letters I referred to recently published works on management or my thoughts on large companies which were very much in the news and about which my clients asked for comments. Before publication, references to the original inquiries were removed from all the letters, which were then generalised and summarised, with the result that a compendium has been produced with generally applicable rules and advice for day to day management. i Many of my clients used the letters for meetings with their first line managers, which led to useful discussions within the company. This book would never have been written if these letters hadn't been requested time again by outstanding company leaders and had not led to agreement - and disagreement - on their part. I would like to thank all those with whom I have had intensive discussions.

Spis treści

I: What Leadership Is About.- Basic Concepts.- What is good leadership?.- Good leadership consists of a clear vision calling for commitment.- Motivating people by encouraging them to pull together.- Making important contacts outside your group and organisation.- Good leadership functions via the group.- It’s difficult to change a group culture.- The contribution you should make to the group culture.- Good leadership at times of crisis.- The four categories of good leadership.- Phenomena are not goals.- Necessary steps.- A word to the wise.- What can be achieved with visions?.- Two meanings.- Who makes use of visions?.- Visions lead to a passive attitude.- Conditional visions give rise to hope.- Visions remove barriers.- The quickest way to lose the vision.- Make sure you focus on solutions.- Visions create ownership.- What is reality?.- What is the real problem?.- The solution: the right approach to planning.- Important decisions.- Do you really want to be a leader?.- Excellence in leadership.- Personal qualities.- Leading a balanced life.- Keeping calm.- Image processing speeds you up.- Image processing isn’t only for verbalising.- Learning to be a leader.- Summary.- The strategic vision.- Being able to arouse enthusiasm in other people.- Practical, concrete and intuitive intelligence.- The art of listening.- The right mixture of pride and modesty.- The ability to make decisions.- The ability to convince others.- Empathy.- Mutual reactions.- Belonging to groups.- Following decisions through.- Authority.- Scarcity.- Role models.- Reflections on Jack Welch: 1.- Self-confidence.- Reflections on Jack Welch: II.- Reflections on Jack Welch: III.- Reflections on Jack Welch: IV.- Reflections on Jack Welch: V.- Warren Buffet.- Whose interests do our managers represent?.- Low profit margins destroy jobs and shareholder value.- Executives make mistakes.- Conclusions for the practice.- Cisco: defined processes.- Management according to Walt Disney.- Tomorrow’s senior executives.- II: Good leadership in Practice.- Basic Principles.- Identification.- Coherence.- Working outside the ‘total picture’ is futile.- The consequences can be disastrous and extremely disheartening for all concerned.- Conflict.- The limbian system.- How executives can be effective at times of crisis.- Crowds.- Zero-sum-games and zero sums.- The basic pattern.- Using the basic pattern for predictions.- Examples of zero-sums.- How do you convert zero-sums?.- Examples of non-zero-sums.- The internal customer relationship.- Third parties as new players.- Ownership.- The difference between something and someone.- People.- Understanding our roles: 1.- Defining a company in terms of customer-orientation.- Understanding our roles: II.- Understanding by allocation to the correct context.- Have managers lost their way en route to company goals?.- Is a lot of management just hot air?.- Do managers promise too much?.- Why do company workers have to solve management’s problems?.- Coping with the behaviour of our staff.- Teams.- Soft factors.- Ways of Communicating.- The first hundred days.- Action comes before emotion.- Cultural change.- The specific process is the key.- Demonstrations.- Downsizing.- Keeping in touch with the workforce.- The layer of resistance.- The anticipatory effect.- The authority effect.- Passing on the baton.- The principle of understanding.- Leadership engineering.- The employee as a human being.- Converting the goals to concrete action.- Don’t leave success for the company to chance.- Management by objectives.- The wrong goals.- The right goals.- Applying creativity.- The experience of company workers and competitors.- Processes for achieving goals.- Mind camps.- Getting company workers to change.- Middle management.- Competition for the best staff.- Agreeing goals.- III: The Leadership of Companies.- The Guidelines.- Competence and shareholder value.- The need to make a profit.- Identity.- Legally separate entities.- 1. Be friendly at the beginning.- 2. Never be the first to defect.- 3. React in a resolute way.- 4. Never bear a grudge.- 5. Avoid bringing the co-operation to an end.- Innovation.- Cost accounting.- Marketing Performance.- Sales activities.- Are the visions of the new economies fading?.- Company philosophies.- About the Author.- Notes.

O autorze

Gerhard Zapke-Schauer ist Präsident des Verwaltungsrats der Euratio Akademie in Zürich und berät hochrangige Führungskräfte von Global Playern zum Thema Leadership.