A leader is a person who can lead others. What are the characteristics of the psychology of a leader?
If you want to become a person that others will look up to, you must have the psychology of a leader.
It is necessary to cultivate leadership qualities, positive thinking. Only then will you be able to succeed, and your actions will change, and, consequently, your attitude towards you!
How to do it? Read carefully and you will know the secret!
Psychology of a leader
1. Leaders¹ use only positive images and try to create a work-friendly picture. In a gloomy or anxious state, it is impossible to achieve labor efficiency.
2. Leaders understand the essence of the problem and try to simplify it. If a tiger is reduced to the size of a cat, it will not be scary at all. Usually people exaggerate the complexity of the problem, which leads to real complications.
3. Leaders smile. Try to smile and at the same time think about something bad. You won't succeed. Or the smile will disappear, or thoughts will change to positive ones. No other is given.
4. Leaders may appear serious, but at heart they are calm and relaxed. Don't be serious. Severity increases the importance and size of the problem. A smile, on the contrary, defuses the situation, reduces the importance, as a result of which the situation is easier to resolve.
Importance blocks thinking. The more important the task, the stronger the experience. In a state of experiencing, it is very difficult to adequately respond to problems and solve them correctly. Leaders understand this, so they try to reduce the severity of the problem for subordinates.
5. Leaders use big images. They create a big vision and make big plans. Big images can motivate people much more than small ones.
6. Leaders look ahead. Instead of looking at how much is left to go, leaders look at how much has already been done. This applies to targets². If you keep looking at how much is left to do to reach your goal, you will never reach it.
When you look at what you don't already have, you take away energy from yourself and sink into negativity. When, on the contrary, you look at how much has already been done, then energy is added, because you experience joy from the amount of work done. Leaders know this and try to show the people they lead how much work has already been done.
7. Leaders look at what things might be like in the future, not what they are now. Every businessman who starts his own business sees him in full bloom. For this he works and is ready to go through all the difficulties. What we have now is just a transitional stage towards the goal. Your real life happens in your mind, and reality is just a reflection of events.
8. Leaders have a positive attitude towards all events. They have a positive mindset. Leaders see all situations in a favorable light, even if they are not at all. Each situation carries the seed of the next victory.
Our life is a series of choices. We cannot choose the situations that will happen to us, but we can choose how to respond to them.
If you react negatively, you will attract more negative situations to you. By responding positively, you transform negative situations into positive ones. If a leader is not able to maintain a positive atmosphere in difficult times, then what kind of leader is he?
Key competencies of a leader: thinking of a leader or leadership in thinking.
The critical reader may quite rightly remark: "But isn't it the same thing?" And he will be absolutely right in his doubts - our language is so arranged that a simple rearrangement of words can cause a serious distortion of meaning. So let's understand this situation with this example.
The reason for the appearance of this article was the review of a friend. I sent him an article from the July issue of Competences for review. An article about the theoretical substantiation of leadership as a phenomenon. The essence of his criticism, in general, boiled down to whether the leader should be able to seem the best among his people, or in fact it is necessary to be the best. Then there is the question of true leadership or its image. That is, by translating this question into managerial language, we get: (including the idea of our own high competence in any area) is this skill alone enough, or is it really necessary to have high competence in all areas of the group.
The key competencies of a leader - to be or to seem?
Let's return to the conceptual apparatus used in the already mentioned article:
Leadership is the position of an individual in a group determined by the recognition of high performance by other members of the group.
Leadership is an internal management process based on the initiative of group members.
So, it is obvious that the 1st definition is “... to seem ...”, 2 - “... to be ...”. Because - 1 is the sale of the idea of one's own superiority, and 2 is the management of the state of initiative (orientation and quality) of the members of the group - this is what we used to consider true leadership.
Oddly enough, but with this approach, the initial contradiction merges into a single key competence of the leader under the conditional name "persuasiveness" and means the ability to sell an idea. It doesn’t matter what, about their own godlikeness, as the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt did, or the need to sacrifice oneself in the struggle for other people’s ideals, as modern leaders do, calling on protesters to the barricades.
Leadership competencies - thinking or perception?
Let's return to our particular case with which we started, and deal with it. Let's assign definitions:
1. Leader's thinking - thinking in which all decisions have a positive (constructive) direction - thinking in which the analysis of the situation leads to a conclusion with possibilities.
2. Leadership in thinking - superiority in thinking.
The first definition is widespread and has not been critically perceived for a long time, although for a person familiar with cognitive processes there is a clear conceptual confusion. Let's figure it out - there are 5 cognitive processes: attention, perception, thinking, imagination, memory - everything is no more, no less. Subtract or add means to go against modern science. So definition No. 1 is the definition of perception as a cognitive process, not thinking - a bad inaccurate definition, but precisely perception. As a result, all trainings in the paradigm of this definition teach leadership perception, not thinking. This also opens up its great prospects, it is also very useful - and this is undeniable. From a practical point of view, for us (HR and [email protected] managers) this does not allow to develop leadership as a competency as a whole - because besides this there is something else besides this component. A useful result of this construction is that the leader must have a special leadership perception of reality, that is, perceive the current situation as a field for future activity - an operational space, and see the world around him as a set of opportunities for achieving goals (his leader).
As for definition No. 2, everything is quite simple here - the leader must at least periodically demonstrate to the environment his superiority in thinking. For this, for a very long time, mankind has developed and is developing intellectual tools that allow, without affecting the brain in order to enhance its performance, to obtain excellent (relatively average) results when solving problems for thinking. Trainings on this topic on the market, although rare, are also found in us (HR and [email protected] managers) to solve the problem of developing the thinking apparatus of managers at all levels at the moment is not difficult.
In the leadership competency model, this area is usually called “Creativity” (I don’t understand why, but for some reason it is), “Manager’s Thinking” and the like. Conclusion: a leader needs to have superiority in thinking, but only in order to demonstrate his process superiority in solving group problems (look for the rationale in the article on leadership in the July issue of "Competencies").
General summary of all our constructions:
Key competencies of a leader:
1. Be able to sell ideas.
2. See the world around you as a set of opportunities to achieve goals.
3. Have superiority in thinking.
And that is not all…..
If you want to become a true leader, you have a difficult task ahead of you: you will be able to learn everything you need to know about your work and about yourself only when you start act as a leader, not just think about leadership.
How to do this is described in the book of the world-famous professor, INSEAD teacher, former teacher of the Harvard Business School Erminia Ibarra - “Act like a leader, think like a leader”, which was published by the Eksmo publishing house.
Why the Traditional Approach Won't Benefit You Much
Most leadership training is about changing the way you think. You are being asked to think about who you are now and who you would like to become.
An entire line of leadership education is based on this: there are thousands of books and courses that should define your leadership style and teach you how to use your strengths.
If you've tried these methods, then you know how limited they are. They can help you identify your strengths and your leadership style. But it is your ideas about yourself and your work that prevent you from becoming a leader. You have to change your attitude, and for this you need only one thing: to act differently.
Aristotle said that people become virtuous by doing good deeds: in other words, by doing the right thing, you yourself become better. His idea finds confirmation in a large number of socio-psychological studies proving that a person's consciousness changes when he begins to behave in a new way. Simply put, external changes affect the internal state, and not vice versa.
Richard Pascal, the management guru, puts it this way: “Adults are more likely to translate a new way of doing things into a new way of thinking than a new way of thinking into a new way of doing things.”
The same is true with leadership. Observations of how adults learn demonstrate that the logical sequence "think, then act" in practice works in a completely opposite way in the processes of personal change, in particular, those associated with the transformation of a person into a real leader.
Paradoxically, our self-knowledge grows only when when changes happen. We try something new, then we observe the results - how we feel, how others react - and only then do we think about what the experience teaches, and perhaps learn a lesson. In other words, we act like a leader and then we start thinking like a leader(hence the title of this book).
How Leaders Actually Become Leaders
Along with the growth of leadership potential, the likelihood that an employee will receive support from the organization also increases. For example, he will be assigned more responsible tasks. This process is cyclical.
When a person first acts as a leader, and then begins to think like a leader, in other words, when the internal changes under the influence of the external, what I call outside perception.
The principle of perception from the outside
Deeply ingrained traditional thinking does not allow us to change our behavior in accordance with the requirements of leadership. The way we think - that is, what we notice, appreciate, consider right and important - directly affects our actions. In fact, inside-out thinking can hinder change.
Our mindset is difficult to change, because it requires experience in what we are least likely to do. We put ourselves in a box. The paradox of change is that the only way to change our way of thinking is to do exactly what our habitual thinking does not allow us to do.
According to principle of perception from the outside, the only way to learn to think like a leader is to start acting like a leader: getting involved in new projects and activities, interacting with a wide variety of people, and experimenting with unfamiliar ways of getting things done.
As a result, habitual actions and thoughts that limit you now are transformed.
During transitions and times of uncertainty, reflection and introspection should to followper actions and experiments, and not vice versa. The new experience not only changes the way you think, your opinion about what is important and what to do, but also you. It will help you move away from the old sources of self-esteem, old goals and habits.
If you use the reverse approach to change, that is, "from the inside out", you will not achieve anything. Contrary to popular belief, excessive introspection keeps us stuck in the past, weakens our receptivity, prevents us from reaching our leadership potential and preparing for fundamental changes in our environment.
It's a bit like looking for a lost watch under a streetlight, while new challenges require a broader view: fresh, external points of view that we are exposed to as we perform various activities.
Lost in transition
To better understand the principle of perception from the outside, I will introduce you to Jacob, a production manager at a food company. After the company was acquired by a private investor, Jacob's first priority was to overhaul the manufacturing process. But because he constantly had to deal with everyday problems, he had little time to think about important strategic issues.
When the owner of the company changed, Jacob's position remained the same, but management's expectations about him changed. But Jacob still didn't do anything to become a leader.
This is a common situation these days. In the past, a promotion or appointment to a new position meant it was time for you to readjust or even rethink your leadership role. Today, important career changes aren't just about getting a solid-sounding job or moving into a new office. Seemingly subtle (as well as larger) changes in your business environment create new, though not always explicit, management expectations about what and how you will do.
Such changes in responsibilities are very complex and require a corresponding change in the approach to managerial work. However, according to my personal research, only 47% of those who reported new expectations for their performance had received a promotion in the two years prior to the survey. For the rest, they were expected to assume a greater leadership role while remaining in their current position. This is exactly what happened to Jacob.
Where to start change?
Best of all, changing how you do your job, what kind of business contacts you make, and how you approach certain tasks. No amount of introspection can bring about change without significant changes in what you do and the people you interact with.
1. Rethink your work
Jacob's intuition told him that the transition to a more serious leadership role meant, above all, a change in how he spent his time. However, two hours in a quiet environment in the office is not the right option. In fact, most of the required changes in Jacob's actions were to encourage him to be in other places.
To be successful, Jacob must first redefine his job, shifting his focus from improving current factory operations to understanding the new environment in which the firm operates and creating a shared strategic vision among his peers that will enable his production management to be properly prioritized. organization as a whole.
Jacob could take into account a number of factors in his actions, such as how the industry in which his firm operates is changing, how it is creating something of value for people, and how all this may change in the future. And, of course, he should influence the people who play the most important role in the process of creating this value, regardless of whether they are in his group or firm.
Jacob wanted to focus on the capital investment his firm would need over the next two years, but he didn't have time to think about it. He complained about the need to constantly monitor the actions of his subordinates or production processes. At the same time, he knew that his boss expected him to create a strategy that would take into account the development of the entire company as a whole, and not just one or two factories, and actively attract appropriate resources.
Until now, Jacob has been successful, moreover, the performance of such duties is typical for many managers at the same stage of career development. In the early stages, we always act in our area of expertise. We also typically manage the work of others within the functional or technical areas in which we are experts. However, the picture completely changes when we begin to play a more serious leadership role.
2. network of business contacts
It is difficult to develop strategic foresight while on the factory floor. To become a leader, Jacob needed to get a complete picture of the situation, that is, to look at it from the side, without being in the thick of things. In order to spend more time outside of his company, Jacob needed to change his business circle.
Through business contacts, Jacob exchanged work-related information, solved problems related to his area of responsibility, and matched the right people for certain groups of employees. But these connections failed to prepare Jacob for the future because they don't go beyond his current way of thinking.
Faced with the need to think outside the box and deal with strategic issues, many managers do not immediately realize that such issues are not just analytical tasks, but something that requires a broader business relationship.
There is another reason why business connections are important to our leadership development. When we have to learn something new, the help and support of more experienced people will not be superfluous at all. They will be able to suggest in which direction to move, and evaluate our efforts, contributing to our professional growth.
3. Get creative
Now Jacob needs to move from his usual leadership style to a style in which he delegates more day-to-day work to his team and begins to collaborate more widely with other parts of the organization.
People who aspire to play a greater leadership role must not only redefine their work and create a new professional network. To a much greater extent, they should rethink their own personality.
They need to transform their values at work, the personal goals that drive their actions, their self-image, and how they are perceived by others.
While personal transformation usually involves changes in leadership style, it is much more than that. When managers like Jacob are asked to consider what prevents them from expanding their stylistic repertoire, many almost always refer to the need to achieve the desired results at any cost. This approach not only helped them succeed, but also underpins their professional identity. Managers want to change, but change doesn't fit their true selves.
When you start trying new, unfamiliar management styles for you, you will have to stop viewing this as “working on yourself” and take a creative approach. You will try different methods and see how they fit with your self-image. It is necessary to focus primarily on self-learning, and not on achieving results. If the chosen method does not work for you, you will need to try something else.
The article is called: Leader's Key Competences: Leader's Thinking or Leadership in Thinking. The critical reader can quite rightly remark: "But isn't it one and the same thing?" And he will be absolutely right in his doubts - our language is so arranged that a simple rearrangement of words can cause a serious distortion of meaning. So let's take a look at this situation.
The reason for the appearance of this article was the review of a friend. I sent him an article from the July issue of Competences for review. An article about the theoretical substantiation of leadership as a phenomenon. The essence of his criticism, in general, boiled down to whether the leader should be able to seem the best among his people, or in fact it is necessary to be the best. Then there is the question of true leadership or its image. That is, by translating this question into managerial language, we get: the leader must have the special competence of a leader in the field of selling ideas (including the idea of his own high competence in any field), is this skill alone enough, or is it really necessary to have high competence in all areas group actions.
The key competencies of a leader - to be or to seem?
Let's return to the conceptual apparatus used in the already mentioned article:
Leadership is the position of an individual in a group, determined by the recognition of high performance by other members of the group.
Leadership is an internal management process based on the initiative of group members.
So, it is obvious that the 1st definition is “... to seem ...”, 2 - “... to be ...”. Because - 1. is the sale of the idea of one's own superiority, and 2. is the management of the state of initiative (orientation and quality) of the members of the group - this is what we used to consider true leadership.
Oddly enough, but with this approach, the initial contradiction merges into a single key competence of the leader under the conditional name "persuasiveness" and means the ability to sell an idea. And it doesn’t matter at all what, about one’s own “godlikeness”, as the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt did, or the need to sacrifice oneself in the struggle for other people’s ideals, as modern leaders do, calling on protesters to the barricades.
Leadership competencies - thinking or perception?
Let's return to our particular case with which we started, and deal with it. Let's give definitions:
1. Leader's thinking - thinking, in which all decisions have a positive (constructive) direction - thinking, in which the analysis of the situation leads to a conclusion about the possibilities.
2. Leadership in thinking - superiority in thinking.
The first definition is widespread, and has not been critically perceived for a long time, although for a person familiar with cognitive processes, there is a conceptual confusion.
Let's figure it out: there are 5 cognitive processes: attention, perception, thinking, imagination, memory - everything: no more, no less. Subtract or add - means to go against modern science.
So, definition No. 1 is the definition of perception as a cognitive process, not thinking - a bad inaccurate definition, but precisely perception. As a result, all trainings in the paradigm of this definition teach leadership perception, not thinking. This also opens up its great prospects, it is also very useful - and this is undeniable. From a practical point of view, for us (HR and [email protected] managers), this does not allow the development of leadership as a competency as a whole - because besides this there is something else besides this component. A useful result of this construction is that the leader must have a special leadership perception of reality, that is, perceive the current situation as a field for future activity - operational space, and see the world around him as a set of opportunities for achieving goals (his leader).
As for definition No. 2, everything is quite simple here - the leader must at least periodically demonstrate to the environment his superiority in thinking. For this, for a very long time, mankind has developed and is developing intellectual tools that allow, without affecting the brain, in order to enhance its performance, to obtain excellent (relative to average) results when solving problems for thinking. Trainings on this topic on the market, although rare, are also found in us (HR and [email protected] managers) to solve the problem of developing the thinking apparatus of managers at all levels at the moment is not difficult.
In the leader competency model, this area is usually called “Systems thinking”, “Innovative thinking”, “Creativity” (I don’t understand why, but for some reason it is), “Manager’s thinking” and the like. Conclusion: the leader needs to have superiority in thinking, but only in order to demonstrate his process superiority in solving the problems of the group.
So, the key competencies of a leader are:
1. Be able to sell ideas.
2. See the world around you as a set of opportunities to achieve goals.
3. Have superiority in thinking.
And that is not all…..
“Be positive. No matter how scary things seem, or
they are, look up and see the possibilities - they are
always visible, for they are always there"
Norman Vincent Peel
In my opinion, a distinctive feature that exists in the mind of a leader, his attitude to life can be called the fact that the leader is capable. He knows how to create positive images and benefit from the most negative, at first glance, situation. The average person, as a rule, sees only the surface of a situation or event, reacting emotionally.
Leaders are not born...
It is common for an ordinary person to belittle their own merits and exaggerate their shortcomings. The prospect of a favorable future is seen as dim by such a person, and problems, on the contrary, are taken seriously. Such a person, of course, fears and does not want negativity in his life, but at the same time, he believes that he will not meet anything good in the future. And the leader, on the contrary, perceives the situation reasonably, knows how to see it for what it really is. The leader sees his opportunities and prospects in a more rosy light.
Therein lies the secret: if you treat the problem without giving it too much importance, then it is solved faster and easier. It all depends on perception: if you take everything to heart, exaggerate the negative significance of a particular situation, throw all your strength into solving it, then this problem will lead to others that can further complicate the situation.
Basically a leader does not use the word "problem". By itself, this word causes a negative impulse in the human brain, which is able to attract to itself, like a magnet, a more negative situation. To denote something unpleasant, leader uses the word "situation". Instead of saying: "I have a problem", the leader will say “an interesting situation has arisen that I will solve”. These two sentences mean essentially the same thing. But the way they sound completely changes the perception of the question that has arisen.
The leader monitors his speech and tries not to use words and phrases in his vocabulary that can cause negative situations and images. The human mind thinks in images. With words, a person conveys these thoughts to others. Emotional words are not able to accurately convey the feeling about the perception of a particular person. Therefore, when such an exchange of information takes place, it is necessary to encode the image with the correct words and pass it on to another who can decode this image in the way the leader needs.
one of the most important skills of any leader is positive thinking Words are the medium. Many words can be used to convey an image. The leader conveys his imagery using words that present the situation in a positive light. One and the same image is capable of both destroying people's faith and motivating them to act. It all depends on what words it is conveyed. When a leader declares to those whom he leads: “we have serious problems,” no matter what he says after this phrase, people will have a negativity. And if you say “We took an opportunity that didn't quite work out the way we expected. We use a different method", then such a statement is likely to inspire action.
Below are options for describing a particular situation by an ordinary person and a leader.
| A common person | The leader so changes typical phrases |
| We're having trouble | We have an interesting situation. |
| It won't work | We need to put in a little more effort to get results. |
| A very difficult situation | The situation is simple: we need to define a plan to solve it |
| The niche is 85 percent filled | We have 15 percent free space |
| I'm too old (young) | My advantage at my age |
| They have a huge advantage over us. | Yes, they have benefits, but no one is perfect. |
| I made a mistake | I got good experience |
| I lost | I lost this fight, but the next step is mine |
Here are a few points about how the leader thinks?
- Leader thinks exclusively positive images, because he knows that the mind perceives mental images, trying to create a favorable field for activity. In a state of anxiety or uncertainty, it is impossible to achieve the effectiveness of the ongoing activity.
- Leader with insight Problems, tries to present it to others in a more simplified form to be able to solve it easier. "Fear has big eyes". If you follow this proverb and discard the exaggeration of the problem, then its solution will not seem so difficult.
- The leader uses a smile. It is natural for a leader to meet any problem with a smile. You can experience it firsthand. If you think of something negative while smiling, the smile will turn into a grimace. A real smile allows you to think positively. Learn to smile and your thoughts will change to positive ones.
- Outwardly, the leader may look serious, but in his soul there is a place of relaxation. Taking things too seriously complicates and exaggerates the size of the problem. And a smile can bring some relaxation, downplay the importance, thereby opening the way for a simple and effective solution. Too serious attitude blocks the resourcefulness of thought. The more seriously you take a given task or a problem that has arisen, the more you will worry. This, in turn, will affect the adoption of a quick and adequate decision. Understanding this, the leader, presenting the problem to his environment, somewhat underestimates and simplifies its significance.
- The leader applies global images. The leader is able to see everything in perspective. Leaders tend to make big plans instead of small ones. A large image can give people much stronger motivation than a small one.
- The leader does not say how much he has left to overcome, he points out how much has already been done. This works great when a person is striving to achieve a goal. If you keep thinking about how much you still have to do to reach your goal, you may never reach it. When you think about what you have not yet achieved, you transform positive energy into negative, and this takes away your strength. And when you look at how much has already been done, then from the awareness of the perfect work, mentally you cheer yourself up, adding positive and constructive energy. The leader, knowing this, constantly reminds his surroundings of how much work has already been done.
- The leader pays attention not to how things are now, but to how the situation will change in the future. Every successful entrepreneur, starting his own business, sees the peak of his heyday. It is the confidence that he will reach this peak that helps him cope with difficulties and solve complex problems. The fact that "now" is only a step to what will be "later" when the goal is achieved.
- The leader positively perceives any situation that arises. The leader is able to perceive any circumstances as positive events, even if they are not.
I think that in any situation, the core of success is laid. Human life consists of a constant need to make choices. A person cannot choose the situation in which he will find himself, but he can choose his reaction to this or that event. If a person reacts negatively and sees only the negative sides, in this way he amplifies the bad energy, aggravating the situation. A positive reaction, on the contrary, is able to transform a negative into a positive.
This property of thinking characterizes a true leader.
Write your opinions and research on the leader's thinking in the comments.
