Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.~Larry Bossidy
As many people say, leaders are not born, they are made. Nonetheless, leaders do tend to have strong personalities, and many are good with people. They do, however, need certain tools in order to help them achieve goals with groups of people. For example, all leaders must know how to execute a plan. This is a very important trait of a leader because without the ability to execute, the leader will have a hard time achieving anything. Many times it can be difficult to work in a group, especially a group that has not worked together before or a group with people who do not particularly like each other. Sometimes people will not agree, and some people will work harder than others, all of which can make it more difficult to achieve your goal.
In order to execute a plan, which is really what a leader does—he or she makes a plan with or without a group then he or she makes sure that the plan is efficiently and correctly executed. One of the first steps is to take your strategy and make sure that it is possible to implement. If your strategy cannot fit within the bounds of reality then your plan will not succeed.
Once you are sure that your plan is something that can be achieved, you have to delegate and make sure people know what they need to do. Separate your one large goal into smaller goals and then give these smaller goals to the people working for and with you. In order to delegate effectively, you have to be able to communicate. Your ideas might make perfect sense to you, but they might not be as clear to someone else. Therefore, you need to be able to communicate and explain your ideas clearly so that someone will be able to understand them. Once the people in your group know what they need to do, everyone can move forward to execute the plan.
By knowing how to execute a plan, by being able to delegate effectively, and by being able to communicate clearly, you will be able to achieve your goals and produce the results that you promised. These tools and traits ill help make you an effective leader. However, you have to learn how to execute, delegate and communicate.
The way you learn how to do these things is to practice. First, start small and start early. You can take leadership positions in your community or school. This will give you the opportunity to execute plans on a smaller scale and to work with a smaller group. Smaller groups will also help you learn how to delegate because there are less people to deal with in the group. Also, if you are the second in command, you can learn from a more experienced leader, such as the president or executive director of the group. You can learn to communicate in many different ways. You can take a speech class at your school or in your community, or you can simply make the effort to talk to different people. You can also attend speeches to see how different people communicate their ideas. What steps will you take to learn how to become an effective leader? What will you do to learn how to execute, to delegate and to communicate?
Tags: execution, first steps, hard time, larry bossidy, perfect sense, strong personalities
