Johannesburg, 08 May 2008 – World-renowned leadership guru and author, Dr Stephen R Covey, will be visiting Cape Town to facilitate a one-day workshop on Leadership Greatness.
The all day event, organised by FranklinCovey Southern Africa and Life College, is set to take place at the Grandwest Arena on 2 June.
The bestselling author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The 8th Habit Dr Covey took time out to discuss his insights into leadership.
“If we can develop leaders who can withstand and embrace the changing times by deeply rooting themselves in the principles of great leadership, then we can develop great people, great teams and great results,” says Dr Covey.
Q: What makes a great leader?
A: A great Leader is one who is able to clearly communicate to people their worth and potential, so that they are inspired to see it in themselves.
Q: You often say that leadership is a choice not a position. Can you elaborate on this?
A: Becoming a leader is a choice that any person can make, as a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a coach, a co-worker or friend. It is about modeled behaviour of the leader that one gets the moral authority to be considered and respected as a leader.
When I speak throughout the world, I often ask audiences; “How many of you have had someone in your life that communicated your worth and potential so clearly that it profoundly influenced your life?” Inevitably over half the people raise their hands. I walk around the room and ask them to share their experience on how it happened, who did it, the impact that it had upon them, and if they too are making the choice to do the same with other people?
Q: Is there a formula for becoming such a leader?
A: Yes, we call it The 4 Imperatives of Leadership Greatness.
- Inspire trust: Great Leaders build relationships of trust through both their character and competence and by extending trust to others. They show people that they believe in their capacity to live up to certain expectations, to deliver on promises, and to achieve clarity on key goals. They avoid micromanaging and second-guessing every step people make, which has a tendency of destroying what little trust may have been there.
- Clarify purpose: Great leaders involve their people in the communication process to create the goals to be achieved. If people are involved in the process, they psychologically own it and a situation is created where people are on the same page about what is really important - mission, vision, values, and goals.
- Align systems: As a leader, do not allow conflict between what you say is important and what you measure as important. For instance, many organisations claim that people are important, while their structures and systems, including accounting, make them an expense or cost centre rather than an asset and the most significant resource.
- Unleash talent: This is the fruit of the other three. When you inspire trust and share a common purpose with aligned systems, you empower people. Their talent is unleashed so that their capacity, their intelligence, their creativity and their resourcefulness are utilised. These are based on principles that build upon each other rather than techniques or steps that have to be taken independent of each other. These aren’t “management tricks” but real principles that guide a true leaders character.