"Effective Leader". We talk about the book by Peter Drucker (+ audio version)

How to become an effective leader? The answer to this and many other popular questions on the topic of leadership can be found in one of the most popular books on the topic of leadership - "Effective Leader".

We share with you the key ideas from this book.

The endowment and talent of a person does not make him an effective leader. Moreover, people with outstanding mental abilities are often surprisingly inefficient workers. They do not understand that thanks to their ability alone, significant success in work cannot be achieved. Their abilities will matter only in combination with the effectiveness of their work.
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The manager’s contribution to the company’s work cannot be measured by either the number of subordinates or the amount of management work. Quantitative characteristics are not suitable for assessing the effectiveness of intellectual labor.

The effectiveness of the work of a manager is indicated by its results, namely, work on the desired product and solving the necessary tasks.

Intellectual activity is determined by its results.

Efficiency can be learned!

One of the most important conclusions reached by Peter Drucker is that efficiency can be learned.

The author identifies five main elements to improve the efficiency of the manager:

1. Effective managers know what their time is spent on and work on managing the small fraction of their time they can control.
2. Effective managers are aimed at achieving results, and not at work as such. Important are the achievements that go beyond the organization’s inner world.
3. Effective managers build their activities on the strengths of both their own and other employees of the organization, rather than focusing on the weak.
4. Effective managers are able to prioritize and focus on the few critical tasks, the implementation of which will bring the most tangible results.
5. Effective leaders make effective decisions that are determined by the right strategy, rather than short-term tactical considerations. Productive solutions are a series of right steps in the right order.

Let us consider these five elements in more detail.

1. How to properly manage your time

Experienced and efficient managers are distinguished by an important quality - they are able to plan and manage their time. They understand that time is a unique resource that cannot be replaced by any analogue.

Of course, many try to plan their time and follow the methods of time management, but often this does not affect the effectiveness of their work.

What distinguishes such people from effective?

Effective managers first determine as precisely as possible what their time is actually spent on, and only then proceed to its distribution and reduction of its unproductive use. After that, the time that they can control, effective managers unite in enlarged blocks.

Effective managers estimate the total amount of time they can control (discretionary time), and then group time blocks for specific activities. If this time is spent on other issues, managers re-revise their schedule, getting rid of several of the least productive activities.

Individual contribution to general activities

It is common for effective managers to go beyond formal responsibilities and view their activities from the point of view of making useful contributions to the common cause. Those who constantly focus on current duties and in every possible way seek to increase their authority and emphasize power are ineffective.

2. Bet on strong qualities

An effective leader makes the most of his strengths and always tries to increase the return on them.

And we are talking not only about our own merits, but also about the strengths of colleagues, subordinates, management, partners. This approach makes existing weaknesses insignificant.

3. How to hire the best

An effective leader understands that outstanding employees always have noticeable weaknesses. Attempting to ignore this fact and finding more compliant employees will only lead to a collection of mediocre people. Therefore, when making personnel decisions, an effective manager focuses on the strengths of the candidate. Usually, top managers do not have close ties with their employees, and they do not try to fit positions for specific people.

The best managers emphasize strengths also in relations with their superiors. They recognize for all the existence of weaknesses, but above all they develop in themselves and in others those qualities that help them achieve the highest results.

4. Everything has its time

The main secret of efficiency, Peter Drucker calls concentration. It is expressed in the performance of the most important things in the first place and in doing only one thing at a time. Effective managers do not do several things at once.

They do a lot of unrelated affairs, but the secret is that they do them in turn and spend much less time on them than others need.

5. Effective solutions

A good leader is a leader who makes effective decisions. And in relation to decisions, the rule “less but better” is applied. From this it follows that its implementation should be simple and as close as possible to the capabilities of the ordinary worker.

How to make effective decisions

Ideally, a decision is a choice between right and wrong, but in reality it is a choice between “almost right” and “most likely wrong” or even just a choice between different actions, whose loyalty cannot be proved. From this it follows that the decision must be started not from a search for facts, as many people usually advise, but to work it out in a clash of opinions.

There is no ready-made recipe for the right solution, but Peter Drucker proposes to follow a few simple and obvious rules:

• Act if the benefits far outweigh the costs and risks.
• You can make a decision about action or inaction, but you can not shy away from making it or limit yourself to half-hearted decisions.
• If the decision causes negative emotions, it does not mean that it is necessary to require repeated research of this issue.
• The fact that the right decision involves some negative points is not a reason for rejecting it.

Finally

Many believe that being a leader is a talent that is either given to a person or not.
However, to be an effective leader means, first of all, to be able to govern yourself, and this skill can and must be learned.

Audio version

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We talk about the key ideas from the best books of the genre of non-fiction. There are more than a hundred bestsellers in our library , including those that have not yet been published in Russian.

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