Verification of leadership: the ability to recognize the problem before the situation became critical

Do good leaders problems rarely reach alarming proportions, because they recognize that and decide early on.

Great leaders recognize the problem as follows (in order of priority):

1. Feel there is a problem, even without seeing it (intuition).

2. Look at the problem and ask questions (curiosity).

3. Collect data (information processing).

4. Report their findings and premonitions several proxies (information).

5. Give the definition of the problem (description).

6. Check the availability of resources (assessment).

7. Decide (leadership).

Great leaders understand that knocks down not so strong as an unexpected blow. Therefore, they are always closely watched, not whether there will be signs of a possible problem and evaluate their capability to solve it. They relate to issues such as the person reading the inscription on the fence pastures: "Those who decide to climb over the fence, be sure to run to the opposite end of the area for no more than 9.8 seconds. Our bull runs over this distance in 10 seconds. "

 

About leaders are judged by the scale of the problems that they deal

In one series of comics «Peanuts» Charlie Brown says, "There is such a big problem, from which I could not escape." Each one of us ever experience a desire to get away from the problem, as the trainer of lions, which gave an ad in the newspaper: "lion tamer required tamed lion."

Constantly communicating with people and interfering with their problems, I noticed that the scale of the individual is more important than the scale of the problem. The greater the person, the problems seem less significant to that person.

I recently spoke with a friend of a woman named Marcia ps. Two years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she underwent surgery. Marcia told me that now she is all right, but her care other women with the same diagnosis, which is getting worse. Between Marcia and her friends in adversity - a huge distance. From the very onset of the disease she remains optimistic and positive thinking. A true leader meets a serious problem that way.

As leaders, we must help people to become ambitious personalities and ambitious person is able to cope with large-scale problems.

 

Problems, problems can be solved quickly, problems with people takes time

Sometimes it happens that a solution to the problem is the number one item on the agenda. But this by no means should not happen in the immediate area of ​​your business. If we focus all efforts on solving another problem, it will become like a farmer from a joke, saying, "You know what the main problem with milking the cows?They can not be milked once and for all. " The problems appear one after the other, but people can not give them the go ahead. Here are my recommendations for more efficient problem solving:

1. Take time to connect with people. Those who are spared the time to develop the members of his team have to spend time solving their problems.

2. Never try to solve the problem for the person. Solve it with the man. Help him get through the seven stages of identification and evaluation of the problems listed above. Read together and discuss this chapter of this book to someone who comes to you for help.

Problems should be solved on the lowest possible level of leadership. U.S. President John F. Kennedy said that shortly before his inauguration, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave him this advice: "Remember, the easy problems to the president do not reach. If the problem is easily solved, then it is someone decided to you. " These words are true for each leader. The higher you went up the ladder of leadership, the less you will have to make decisions, but the more important it will be to have these solutions, the bigger will be the challenges that you have to deal with. What a higher level of leadership is the person, the better it must be able to cope with problems. Eminent British surgeon John Hunter XVIII century said: "The situation becomes a problem only when a person does not have enough resources to deal with it." The remainder of this chapter is devoted to features of effective problem solving.

 

The right attitude to the problem

Subject position, attitude towards the situation is so important for a leader that this will be discussed in a separate chapter. But a few thoughts I would like to state right now, Human was an American author and clergyman Norman Vincent Peale, claiming that positive thinking manifests itself in the human mind about a particular issue, and enthusiasm - in the senses, which are associated with the problem and its solution. Both together will determine your actions with respect to the problem. If I were given the opportunity to do something for humanity, I would like first of all to help people change their view of the world, not to solve their problems. Positive thinking is not always able to change the circumstances of our lives, but it is sure to change ourselves. If we are able to truly think in difficult situations, our way of life becomes a lot easier.

D. Target story "Window" tells the story of two seriously ill, lying in a hospital ward. The doctors did not allow them to get out of bed, not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio and read books. In such a situation, the only thing that remained bedridden people - talk. Long hours they talked about everything, just about anything can be said to two friends - about family, work, travel, about my life.

The bed was one of the patients at the window. After a while his case went a little better, and the doctors allowed him to sit. One hour a day he sat on my bed and looked out the window, detailing the neighbor in the ward all that he had seen - a beautiful park with a lake, well-dressed people walking along the alleys. The second patient, who could see only a piece of the sky, looking forward to these stories. They were his only window to the world beyond the hospital walls.

One day after the most fascinating story, in-patient began to think about how it is unfair - a neighbor sees everything, and he does not see anything. He was very ashamed of such thoughts, but throw them out of his head, he could not. A time for reflection, he had more than enough. From these thoughts, his health was getting worse, the relationship with the neighbor - too.

Late one night at the patient lying in the window, had an attack of breathlessness, He was so bad that he was unable to reach the bell and call the nurse. A neighbor idly lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and listened breathless wheezing, but did nothing.

A nurse came into the House in the morning, during routine rounds. The man at the window leezhaschy was dead.

After a while, the second patient has asked doctors to transfer him to the window, to make room. Left alone, he immediately got up on one elbow to see the world outside - the park, the lake and the well-dressed crowd.

But he saw nothing. The window looked out onto a blank brick wall *.

* GW Target «The Window», in The Window and Other Essays Mountain View, Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1973).

 

Faithful Action Plan

As often happens with us more than enough simple solutions, but too few simple problems! From time to time we feel "like a cartoon character:" I try to use one day at a time, but recently piled on me at the same time a few days at once. "We can be sure of one thing: a life without problems do not happen!

It is said that the development of spacecraft "Apollo" was a conflict between engineers who develop design of the ship, and scientists. Scientists have insisted that all cargo ship to the last gram consisted of research equipment to study the cosmos. To do this, scientists say is necessary to create a flawless vehicle. (In those years it was popular to the word "defect-free".) Then do not need any spare parts, and all the space ship can take scientific instruments.

Engineers assured that soundness fundamentally unattainable. Therefore, to ensure the safety of the astronauts in the spacecraft design should provide back-up systems. The premise was: anything can fail, and you can not predict what it is. But in that case the board will be much less room for scientific instrumentation.

In the end, the conflict was resolved by astronauts. All of them unanimously supported the creation of redundant life support systems. This story shows how important it is to make assumptions and to discuss them.

Too often when a problem occurs, we are ready to look for the easy way out - put the blame and responsibility on someone else. Recently, I came across a fun circuit, in a humorous way showing typical of many of us desire to shirk responsibility (see p. 178).

 

PROCESS SOLUTIONS

So, we do not wish to shirk responsibility, we have a correct position in relation to the problem and the correct course of action.

Now valeno comply phased process of finding solutions. I suggest doing it in this order.