Here's a quick thought to help you become a better leader.

There are several different styles of leadership; and the best leaders combine these styles to get the best results.  One view of these styles, that of Daniel Goleman, is that leadership can be:

• Co-ercive, in other words, the leader is effectively saying to his followers, "Do what I tell you!";
• Authoritative, where the 'leader knows best' and is inviting his people to come with him;
• Affiliative, or building relationships with people and strengthening team work;
• Democratic, where people come first;
• Pace setting, in which a leader with high standards tries to guide a high performing team towards a stretching goal, or
• Coaching, where a leader invites followers to try an approach that he thinks will work for them.

Not all of these styles, however, always have a positive impact on the culture of the organisation (can you work out which ones?), so it's important to be wary of using them indiscriminately.

However, regardless of the leadership style that you choose to adopt in any particular set of circumstances, it's important to remember that your staff will expect to be treated like people and not machines.  So to help you do this, remember to 'practise the REST'; in other words:

• Respect
• Empathy
• Sincerity
• Thanks

If you're not used to thinking in this way, then it certainly does take practice, but if you seek out opportunities to do so, then you will indeed become a better leader.  And of course it would be remiss of me not to mention in passing that an easy and no-cost way to find out more would be to come along to the next bite-sized Business Doctors seminar at Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry next Tuesday morning.  Just click here to book a place.

Kwai Yu, who, through his work with Leaders Cafe 2020, is quite an inspiration to me personally, has told the story of how he settled upon a vision of helping twenty million people to raise their leadership aspirations by 2020.

Now, not only is that quite a catchy line, Kwai's point is that the psychological effect of a stretching vision is like the effect of gravity on a large mass - the larger the mass, the bigger the thump it makes when it falls to Earth.

So, as a Business Doctor who is constantly banging on to SME owners about the importance of having a vision for their business, I'm thinking I should be taking some of my own medicine by developing my own vision a little further.

In my case, my vision will be to help 15,000 Yorkshire businesses by 2015.

So I'd like to know whether you think this is achievable or perhaps not ambitious enough.  So I'd love to hear from you - do contact me or let me know your thoughts via my LinkedIn poll.

And good luck with developing your own vision - I'd be really interested to hear about it; sometimes it throws up some fasincating insights like the undertaker I was speaking to recently who told me that his vision was to help people think outside of the box!

OK, so we all know that change is constant.  In other words, we have to live with the fact that the world is changing at a fast pace and this has an effect on our day to day lives.  So our ability to respond to change becomes a key factor in whether we merely survive or whether we thrive.

So as leaders, we are responsible for making these changes happen.  In business, at its most simple level, changes we have to lead may be new technologies, new ways of working, but they may also be radically different business models that could have a fundamental impact on the lives of the people who work with us.  Now it would be no surprise to me to learn that a few of us have found the task of delivering and embedding such change to be quite a tricky one.

So what can we do to make it easier?

• Firstly, accept that resistance to changing on the part of the people affected by it is only natural.  This can be thought of as a curve, which maps the psychological journey made by people confronted with change.  Early feelings of denial are followed by fear and anxiety, subsequently gradual acceptance, leading to changes ultimately being accepted and even ultimately embraced (yes, that does happen!).
• Secondly, be aware that the earlier you get buy-in from those affected by change (often referred to as ‘stakeholders’), the smoother the resistance curve is likely to be.  Make your consultations with those affected early, sincere, genuine and meaningful.
• Thirdly, communicate, communicate, communicate during the transition process.  This is an effective way (arguably the only effective way) to minimise the feelings of fear, anxiety and depression and consequently minimise the negative personal effects of change on people (and consequently their view of you as a leader).  At Business Doctors, we run an extremely effective staff communication workshop to get staff engaged with and motivated by significant changes in a business.  We’ve seen how it works in practice.

Do these and people will thank you for it.  Trust me, I’m a Business Doctor…

Read more about the process of personal change on the Businessballs web site.

Here’s a thought-provoking idea from ‘The New Leaders’ by Daniel Goleman that I’m reading at the moment.

If you are striving to become a more effective leader but encountering resistance from the people that work for you and with you, take a step back.  Ask yourself:

• Are the things I’m trying to learn in tune with what motivates me personally?
• Am I focussing on learning outcomes, rather than the process of learning?

Because our commitment to learn is so much stronger when we believe that what we are aiming to get better at is in tune with what really motivates us as individuals, it's a good step to take to think about why we’re in business in the first place – in other words, what’s important to us in life? (More about this in my blog post It's all in the mind - what's your vision?)

Only once you’ve taken this first step can you start to find ways to align your learning and your personal aspirations, and thus be more motivated to learn.  You can do this by looking at the patterns in your behaviour that cause unwanted outcomes at work – let’s say, for example, confrontations with key members of staff and try to become aware of what it is that’s driving that behaviour in you:

• Are you being too controlling about the way your experienced managers go about their work (it would motivate them more to know they had more autonomy about how they go about their jobs)?
• Do you jump in too soon to take control of a job you've delegated to somebody?

When you’ve identified the behaviour, you need to identify a more constructive behaviour which is in line with your understanding of what motivates you and then practise it over and over (look for opportunities outside of work in particular, such as with voluntary groups or community activities).  Eventually new the pattern of behaviour will become the norm because you will have succeeded in making your brain behave in a more constructive way, overcoming your previous, negative habits.

Try reading around the subject a little – Goleman’s book is highly recommended; or think about taking a little advice from a leadership coach such as Keith Harris at Downsfield.

For me, Daniel Goleman is one of those 'superstars' of thinking about interpersonal relations.  I'm excited to learn today that he's leading a masterclass in Manchester on 13th April, supported by NHS North West Leadership Academy.  The masterclass aims to inspire and challenge leaders and managers across the public and private sectors on practical ways in which emotional and social intelligence - Goleman's specialism - can improve performance.

Full details of the event can be found at http://www.smedoc.co.uk/masterclasses/detail.asp?Classes_ID=4.  I'm told that there is a reduced rate of £495 for bookings and payments made before the end of February.