On Leadership_领导的品质与责任_英文.doc

on leadershipthousands of years of peoples civilization tells us that when we want to do something successfully, we always follow a person or some person we call leaders or leadership. every field has its leaders. roosevelts new deal saved the americans capitalism; steam engine invented by james watt promoted the first industrial revolution and by following the marxism and communism, many countries had won the world war ii and developed to be an economic giant. those are the examples of successful leadership in the history, but what the definition of the todays leaders or leadership and the skills they need for tomorrows competition in which everything develops rapidly.the oxford advanced learners english chinese dictionary gives us two items about its definition. firstly, a leader is a person who leads a group of people, especially the head of a country, an organization, etc. secondly, a leader is a person or a thing that is the best, or in first place in a race, business, and etc. from the two items of the definition, we can see that the definition talks about the two important factors of leadershipwhat kind of organization that a leader works in and what kind of skills for leadership to be the best. that means the leadership has to realize team responsibilities and characteristics or skills so that the leadership could lead their team to survive from the fierce competition and to be a winner. therefore, i want to talk the three questions of the leadership by analysis of basic skills and responsibilities. the three questions are: 1, what is the direction in which the leaders of tomorrow should be pushing cultural evolution to prepare for the surprises of tomorrow? 2, what sort of characteristics and skills must a leader have to perceive the needs of tomorrow and to implement the change needed to survive? 3, what are the implications for the selection and development of future leaders?a, the basic skillsthe basic skills are very important because everyone needs them to work better and have a successful career, so is the leadership. leaders, like so many other normal people, needs to eat, to think, to rest, to learn and work. therefore the leadership also needs the basic skills to finish their work and maintain best position. here follows some basic needed skills.a. be humble to learn.learning is not only a process, but also a skill. a learning process lasts in ones whole life, because we are swimming in the ocean of knowledge and its never too old to learn. but when it comes to the skill of learning, the leaders must use every effort to achieve what they want to learn or possess. everyone are in the same level from birth, so a leadership only can possess business smarts, technical capabilities, cultural sensibilities and even languages through learning. books, activities, person, animals action, culture, communication and information could provide them with endless wisdom. and they should also know that learning doesnt mean how many certificates they have but means how much experience you can use. learn and live.b. have effective communication was an article written by mike myatt in the website of forbes in 2012. “it is simply impossible to become a great leader without being a great communicator.” ten secrets are 1. speak not with a forked tongue; 2. get personal; 3. get specific; 4. focus on the leave-behinds not the take-aways; 5. have an open mind; 6. shut-up and listen; 7. replace ego with empathy; 8. read between the lines; 9. when you speak, know what youre talking about; 10. speak to groups as individuals. using effective communication and conversation, the leadership could be good at expressing their ideas, understanding others concerns, needs and adding the value to the world. since the information age, a challenge task for leadership is they have to communicate to the media and even to the people all over the world. april of 2013, apples ceo, tim coo, had published his apologies to all chinese consumers. todays leadership could use media to deliver a true & correct, well reasoned message, advertise their products, handle some emergencies and express their value to the public. for instance, during every time for the u.s president election, every president candidate not only delivers the election speech to those who will vote but also to those who concerns the world political and economic situation. c. be confident and have faith in yourselfandy s. grove, the former ceo of intel corporation, has put forward the famous idea, . when he set up integrated electronics corporation the robert noyce, gordon moore in 1968, perhaps they never imagine that they could be so successful. but since andy s. grove became the president of the company in 1979 and the ceo in 1987, he applied his idea step by step and his company finally to be a bright star. he is confident and has strong faith in himself. a leader wont get to the top position without self-confidence. being confident and having faith in themselves, they always gather all of the information that they can, do a cost-benefit analysis of potential options, use their best judgment and then go for it no matter the answer is right or not. if the answers were wrong, a good leader would admit and learn from the failures and move on. but when new idea or decision couldnt be proved wrong, the leaders should have believe themselves and make it no matter how hard it is. in the book of , napoleon hill gives us a best example. a few years back, ford decided to produce his now famous v-8 motor. he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. the design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight cylinder gas engine block in one piece.ford said, “produce it anyway.” “but,” they replied, “its impossible!” “go ahead,” ford commanded, “and stay on the job until you succeed no matter how much time is required.”the engineers went ahead. there was nothing else for them to do, if they were to remain on the ford staff. six months went by, nothing happened. another six months passed, and still nothing happened. the engineers tried every conceivable plan to carry out the orders, but the thing seemed out of the question; “impossible!”at the end of the year ford checked with his engineers, and again they informed him they had found no way to carry out his orders. “go right ahead,” said ford, “i want it, and ill have it.” they went ahead, and then, as if by a stroke of magic, the secret was discovered. the ford determination had won once more!above all, the three basic skills be humble to learn; have effective communication and be confident and have faith in yourself could build great leadership and personal relationship for you, because its the basis for leadership to implement their decisions, strategies and visions. the leaders could learn new things and get more useful information to help him make a right decision, then use the effective communication to express themselves to their people, to their consumers and even to their audiences. b. responsibilitieshere, i m going to talk about more important characteristics by analyzing the leaderships responsibilities, which i think is the most important thing. when someone takes the top position of any organization, the first thing is the responsibility. when the leaders are going to take the responsibility, they need to think about these three questions before everything. they are: 1. how far do you want to go; 2.which direction and how do you want to go; 3.what will make your team members success as much as possible. the answer is so simple that maybe every people had thought about that, because every family may meet across the same situation. for instance, in a family, the father feeds his wife and children. when he builds his family, he would think about these questions. how far does he want to go means living in a high level quality or working with a decent job he wants? then he will think about how could he get a decent one with high salary, by setting up his own company, being a senior engineer or running for presidency? at last, this father will think about his family his children, his daughter and son. so he has to develop and train the entire members to ensure that the whole success of his family.the leadership faces the same questions, too. in all teams, the leadership should be responsible to think about that. how far do they want their team to go bigger, the same level or smaller? which direction do they want to go tradition, e-commercial, globalization or innovation? how to make sure everyone in the team develops comprehensively? i am going to talk about the three items of responsibilities for leadership one by one.a. be ambitious and set up a higher goalthe big difference between leadership and management is that leaders must see far and have ambitions. the leadership should decide a goal and draw the blueprints. but the managers are the person to carry out the plans and business. the leadership is the core to an organization, just like the heart to the whole body. the leaders should make decisions and judgments by comprehensive researches from industry, business, district layout, products, markets, and technology to human resources. the goals were set up not only for the leadership but also for their organization, hoping they and their organization could fight everything and finally got to the right destination and realized their value.b. have a quick response nowadays, the worlds situation is going through a very quick transition, and the competition pattern is changing from “big fish eating small fish” to “quick fish eating slow fish”. if any organization want to survive in the worlds development, the leadership should foresee what others cannot see, think more and response quicker than others. everything goes following the principle of survival of the fittest. for example, the important transformation in the history of ges development is that they implement a new flat organization structure and reduce the rights of the decision-making department, which follows the trend advance of the market situation. jack welch had said that a man with thick cotton-padded clothes cannot be expected to response the subtlechanges of temperature so quickly. therefore, the leaders should better have an acute sense, feeling the infinitesimal changes in every potential field. the information age is very convenient for leadership that they can notice every event happened all over the world in the same time. political crisis, climate change, bank policies, sports events and customers feedback are big or small things that could influence the leaderships final decision. in response to those changes, the leadership should make relevant strategies for their organization and if necessary they need to change some strategies to keep up with the current situation. during that process, the leaderships responsibility is to choose a quick and right direction to achieve their goals. c. inspire and develop people some leaders are always complaining that they lack person with different abilities. but the number of people with abilities in the world is countless, and its impossible to attract the entire talented person under their leadership, which also cost high. so the best way for the leadership is to inspire and train the current people of the team, and its also the responsibility for leadership to do this. the leadership cannot work alone; they belong to a group, so they should regard themselves as one part of the group but do different work. the roles the leaders play are guidance and building up a good professional platform, which contains innovative ideas and methods to inspire every members high energy and creativity. by this comprehensive encouragement mechanism and training lessons, the leadership could union them and fully use of all members of the team. thus, all advantages the leaderships want have been done members with abilities, energy, effectiveness, union and hard working people. on the other hand, its also the leaderships responsibility to inspire and train people, because the leadership leads and develops not only the whole team, but also all people and members in it. it is the people in the team that the leadership should be responsible for. a responsible leadership provides team members with psychological consultation, moral principle as well as skills training. through this all-round development, all team members will see their progress and values they could bring to the team.the above three items are the most responsibilities, and are important for a team that leadership should decide to set up a ambition and a higher goal, choose the direction and useful way to go and inspire each other and grow together.after analyzing the above materials, lets go back to three questions one by one.1, which direction? my answer is that a leader should choose cultural integration as the direction pushing cultural evolution to prepare for tomorrows surprises. the basic skill of being humble to learn and effective communications are the proofs. as we all know that the world is becoming a whole body, and anything or anybody cannot and exist and live alone. every country, economy, people, lifestyle and culture is always under the influences of the others. so if the leadership want to survive, they must learn, communicate and infuse their original culture with the good things of others, which means cultural integration. leaders should imitate, apply what they have learned from others and preserve their own ideas. they have their own advantages as well as the advantages of others, so they have got everything they need to prepare for the tomorrow and couldnt be eliminated. for example, there is a trend that many western musical melodies borrow eastern elements and create new tunes. and also, the kfc leadership adjusts its tastes with different local tastes in every country all over the world but with the same namehamburger chicken loaf，french fries, so that the kfc could be the biggest and most popular fast food in the world. therefore, cultural integration could be the direction leadership chooses to handle the surprises of tomorrow.2, what sort of characteristics or skills? from above, the basic skills and three items of responsibilities of the leadership are the indispensable parts for leadership to perceive the needs of tomorrow and to implement the change needed to survive. learning, communication, quick response and having faith is the key skills for a leader to perceive the need and the change of the tomorrow, while the right directions, strategies and inspiring and training team members are the characteristics for a leader to implement the change to survive. they also play different roles in the process of a teams development and success, and they the p