Elearning! October-November

October-November 2013

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

Issue link: http://elmezine.epubxp.com/i/201066

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TipsLeadership Three Steps to Spark Your Own Authentic Leadership Journey HOW TO MAKE A MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTION TO YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND ITS BOTTOM LINE. BY TATIANA SEHRING Leadership is a hot topic of career conversations and organizational management that fuels a multi-billion-dollar self-help industry. From highly efective habits to leadership models and personal accounts of extraordinary life circumstances — the topic touches everyone in some facet of their career, ranging from receptionists to managers, and directors to C-suite executives. From an enterprise learning standpoint, the topic is particularly important as you are faced with the responsibility of organizational development and learning strategies that are critical to employee performance and the success of the organization. In fact, data shows that investment in the development of employees can improve productivity by 81 percent, revenue generation by 48 percent, and marketing share by 30 percent.1 Nevertheless, whether you're interested in developing your own leadership skill sets or those of your team and/or your organization, it doesn't require extraordinary tales of war, winning sports championships, or miraculously landing a plane safely on the Hudson. We all have opportunities to lead and grow in our daily lives regardless of our title or role and regardless of what phase of the professional life cycle we are in. Great leadership begins with a conscious choice and sustained eforts to improve over selves, our awareness and our capabilities to grow fulfllment and success at both the personal and professional levels. No matter what advice you've read or heard, it's important to set standards that align with personal lifestyle, career goals, and organizational mission and culture. To help, I ofer three empowering concepts I've found to be successful across many organizational cultures. 1 RISE ABOVE AND ESTABLISH YOUR KEY INTERNAL DRIVERS. Successful leaders are selfaware and able to rise above confict, inefciencies and other circumstances that may push internal buttons or misalign with internal drivers. So it's important to exercise selfawareness, focus, compassion and patience. It's also important to know your self-worth and believe in the value that you bring to the table. To illustrate this point, let's consider at Google's CEO Larry Page. While he faced criticism and many challenges early on, he remained focused and did not let what others thought distract him from pursuing a strategy and pioneering success for his company. Today, Google is considered an industry standard for employee culture and leadership development. If you don't rise above it all, you're creating unnecessary obstacles that limit your success and advancement. Remember that you're in charge of creating your destiny. So learn to trust your inner compass. 2 FINE-TUNE EXTERNAL DRIVERS AND USE THEM TO INSPIRE OTHERS. How do you inspire others? Great leaders make a genuine efort to understand what is important to those with whom they interact every day. What motivates them, and how do [1] HCM Advisory Group and Saba Sofware, Inc., State of the Industry Study: Transforming Learning into a Strategic Business Enabler, November 2012. Elearning! October / November 2013 41

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