Communication has matured over a relatively short period, changing from customary face-to-face dialogue to the use of innovative technology to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

With the introduction of the telegraph and telephone to more contemporary means such as email, text-messaging, the use of social media, and video tele-conferencing, communication has become easier to accomplish, but much less personal, and many times misunderstood. 

Think about how difficult it would be to corral a horde of feral cats!  

It would take a tremendous amount of time, patience, some ingenuity, negotiation, persuasion, and maybe even a bit of bribery and you still may not be able to gather them! 

There is an old saying about those who have climbed the ladder of success, which is "The higher the monkey climbs the tree, the more of his butt you'll see." 

What this means is that as you achieve higher leadership roles, the more you will be scrutinized regarding how you treat others, how you perform your work, your ethics and integrity, and your credibility with others.  So let's talk about how you, as a new or established leader, can understand what others are looking for and seeing when they view your assent into leadership.

Leadership, in and of itself, is complex! 

There are so many different ways that leadership is defined. On top of requiring specific competencies that must be gained and maintained, people who believe in you must have similar enough values to want to follow you. 

And You have to Coach Them, Too? 

Leadership requires a complex collection of many attributes that include follower-desired personality traits, communication skills, leadership skills, and teaching ability, to name a few. A preferred leadership style is developed by the leader through learning and experience, and the leader’s tendency is to fit the situation to his or her particular style.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to walk into a leadership position and lead the charge toward efficiency, effectiveness, and higher profits and production without establishing and maintaining relationships with others? 

I didn’t think so! It’s quite evident that an essential element in leading others is building and maintaining relationships with everyone in your organization, at every level. Let’s look at a popular leadership theory – Transformational Leadership – that combines many of the traits needed that emphasize relationship building.

Conflict resolution management is a critically important topic to contend with, regardless of your leadership position in the organizational echelon. Confronting conflict with a purpose to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all is difficult, but certainly not impossible. 

In this article, I’ve broken conflict resolution down to six easy to follow stages. Understanding these six stages can, in due course, lead the organization to continue on a positive path with reduced conflict and higher productivity. Largely, the problem solving steps are quite simple. 

Possessing certain leadership skills and characteristics may perhaps allow a leader greater success. Research has shown that personal leadership characteristics are linked directly to leader behavior.

Leadership characteristics affect three specific attributes: