With heart, candor and wisdom, Sal Monastero here delivers invaluable guidance that parents, teachers, coaches, leaders, and managers at every level in all walks of life can apply to their own betterment and to the well-being and affirmation of their colleagues and teammates."

David M. Darst, CFA Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist Morgan Stanley Smith Barney

"Sal creates a compelling path to leadership excellence. His 37 years of field leadership experience provides readers with real-life stories of what to and what not to do as a leader. Sal's personal experiences allow readers to significantly accelerate their own leadership journey.'"

Gerald Herbison, MSM, ChFC(R), CASL(R), CFP(R), CLF(R) Director, CLF(R) Program Assistant Professor, Management Studies The American College

Many of us are not born natural leaders but most of us can develop leadership traits that allow us to successfully handle complex issues on a daily basis. In Winning at Leadership, a former Wall Street executive teaches both experienced and novice managers the communications skills, personal values, and problem-solving abilities he learned and implemented during the nearly four decades he effectively led an organization in a competitive and challenging marketplace.

Winning at Leadership

How to Become an Effective LeaderBy Sal Monastero

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Sal Monastero
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-7834-8

Contents

Acknowledgments..............................................................................ixPreface......................................................................................xiIntroduction.................................................................................xiiiSection 1: Learn to Be a Leader..............................................................1Chapter 1: Learn to Be a Leader..............................................................3Chapter 2: Leaders Must Possess the Right Motives to Earn Followers..........................17Chapter 3: Successful Leaders are Good Listeners.............................................29Chapter 4: Successful Leaders Communicate Personally.........................................41Chapter 5: Successful Leaders Know the Needs of Their Team...................................49Chapter 6: Successful Leaders Know Everyone on Their Team Is a Volunteer.....................57Section 2: Leadership Values and Skills......................................................65Chapter 8: Successful Leaders Are Decisive...................................................75Chapter 9: Successful Leaders Are Positive Leaders...........................................85Chapter 10: Successful Leaders Are Inspiring.................................................97Chapter 11: Successful Leaders Are Honest....................................................107Chapter 12: Successful Leaders Are Confident.................................................115Section 3: Actions of Successful Leaders.....................................................125Chapter 13: Successful Leaders Think Like Owners.............................................127Chapter 14: Successful Leaders Set and Monitor Priorities....................................137Chapter 15: Successful Leaders Manage Conflicts..............................................147Chapter 16: Successful Leaders Never Stop Coaching...........................................161Conclusion...................................................................................177

Chapter One

Learning to Be a Leader

In his book Coaching, Ferdinand F. Fournies described what I was like when I was promoted into my first management position. I think he was describing almost everyone who receives a promotion into a first leadership position. He probably was describing you too. He said that when someone is promoted, the person who does the promoting thinks this: "You are a manager because I just made you one; therefore, you must know how to do the job." In other words, the person making the promotion is thinking, "I promoted him to his position; therefore, he must be qualified. If he wasn't qualified, I wouldn't have promoted him." Fournies goes on to say that "when the new manager fails, the primary reason for failure is assumed to be unchangeable, inherent limitation in the individual, rather than an inability to do something because he or she does not know how to do it."

Most superiors in an organization will not admit that they picked the right person but just did not put enough time into coaching the new leader properly. So when the newly promoted person fails, they think it has to be because he or she failed to do something. In truth, the superior made a mistake by not realizing that technical qualifications are not the same as leadership qualifications. Technical qualifications involve proficiency in a particular function of the business, such as sales ability or accounting or financial skill. A person who is technically proficient is not necessarily ready for leadership.

The second mistake is more unfortunate, because the newly promoted people think that because their superiors promoted them, they must be qualified. In reality, the only people who know that the newly promoted leader lacks leadership training are the ones who work with and for that leader. They not only see it but often are called upon to become the coaches and trainers of their new leader. This kind of coaching can sometimes be harsh, particularly when the new leader is not prepared. In these situations, the employees often will provide negative coaching and either be critical or show their frustration in other ways.

Employees may ask for transfers. They may complain to coworkers. They may leave the company. My goal is to give you the tools to be a successful leader so that you avoid some of the mistakes many of us made and still make. The solution is to learn to be a leader.

Leadership Can Be Learned

Learning to be a leader does not have to be difficult, but it does require learning. The reason is that people follow a person, not methods, and most new leaders start out with methods. They emphasize job-specific methods or rules rather than seeing that the leadership function is people oriented.

It was perhaps a little easier for me because I was a leader in a sales organization. When you lead a sales organization, it quickly becomes obvious that there is no way you can be successful unless your salespeople and their support staff are both personally successful and supportive of your leadership. If you don't figure that out on your own, they will be sure to tell you. Every dime of my revenues came from the people I managed. I did not personally produce anything of value. They did! More importantly, I learned that my success or failure was not going to be dictated by the corporate leaders in New York. It depended on my success or failure in gaining the support of the people who worked with me locally. I needed them!

It is possible that it is more difficult to understand how important your employees are in a non-sales leadership management position, because the fruits of their efforts are not as immediately measured as in a sales management position. However, it is important to remember that whether you are in a sales organization or perform an administrative function—in any leadership position—you will fail if those you lead are failing. It is interesting to me that there are so many leaders who have the ability to divorce themselves from the failures of their employees yet are willing to own the successes they achieve. I have known people who believed they were good leaders even though their business units were failing. For example, one of my former employees was responsible for the development of new salespeople. He was not good at it and had a dismal track record. When I would press him on the trainees' poor performances, he would terminate them rather than improve them and then come back and say, "I showed them the door." I would then press him on the poor performance and his response was never to take any personal responsibility. It was always the trainee's fault, not his.

These leaders believe that circumstances cause their lack of performance and that they earned a promotion based on effort not results. It's similar to playing a sporting event where the score doesn't matter.

We Start Leading in Middle Management

For most of us, our first meaningful leadership position will be in what is often described as middle management. Middle management, though, can mean a lot of things. For our purpose, I will use middle management to mean any position, in any endeavor, where you lead people directly and not through intermediaries. You could be leading a platoon, a basketball team,...