A good leadership development plan has three key characteristics. When you've finished creating your plan, you should evaluate it to be sure it has each of these characteristics:

• A good leadership development plan supports your vision by aligning goals, objectives, and actions, with the vision.
• It's tailored to your needs. Some organizations use a generic format for leadership planning purposes, forcing all potential leaders to try to fit into the same mold. When it comes to leadership plans, however, one size doesn't fit all. Each potential leader's self-assessment will reveal a different mix of preferences, motivators, strengths, and weaknesses. And to be most effective, each person's development plan must be personalized to address his unique mix. Since actions are individualized, rewards should be as well. When you plan the rewards you'll give yourself for performing certain actions and achieving objectives and goals, be sure they're commensurate with the effort you've expended and that they truly motivate you. You won't bother working for a reward if you don't care about it.
• It's grounded in real-world experience. When a plan integrates leadership development with on-the-job activities, you're able to practice skills in a hands-on way, while contributing to the productivity goals of the organization at the same time.

To be successful, a development plan must not conflict with the organization's goals and priorities. When you create your leadership development plan, discuss your needs with your manager. It's important to strike a balance between your development needs and the organization's goals. If you don't negotiate your needs up front, you may find yourself stuck and unable to meet them later on.Future leaders learn best by imprinting on more experienced, seasoned leaders. While each leadership plan must be individualized, the basic steps presented in this course can be passed on by leaders to future leaders. This can be done as part of a coaching or mentoring effort to help new leaders discover their needs and develop into their roles.A leadership development plan requires a current assessment of yourself and your environment; goals, objectives, and actions that derive from your own assessment and vision; and specific measures for sustaining the momentum of your development. After creating your plan, you evaluate it to ensure it has three important characteristics: it must support the vision, be tailored to individual needs, and be grounded in real-world experience.For a plan to support your vision, be sure that actions, objectives, and goals are in alignment with the vision. To ensure your plan is tailored to your needs, make sure that your goals, objectives, and actions are established to fill gaps and address your weaknesses. And finally, to ground your development plan in real-world experience, integrate leadership development with on-the-job activities where possible. This enables you to practice skills in a hands-on way, while contributing to the productivity goals of the organization at the same time.

No matter where they're found in an organization, innovators are a vital part of a company's structure. They keep the organization focused on the future. Innovation leaders are often the people who really push their company to develop a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.

• Bottom-up innovation happens when people at the operational level have ideas that are developed upward for management support. A key feature is the business culture – it's entrepreneurial and encourages risk taking.
• Top-down innovation is different. Management typically initiates it in response to a lucrative business opportunity. In this model, ideas flow downward to lower-level teams. The key feature here is the process – management makes an idea actionable, and then the idea is implemented.

Because these models are different, each requires a different focus and style from innovation leaders. You might think that only bottom-up innovation is "real" innovation, but that's not the case. If your company has truly innovative leadership, both top-down and bottom-up innovation can coexist. They're actually complementary. Suppose a great idea is generated bottom-up. Management might think it could really work and turn it into a top-down project, giving it full support.

Characteristics of an innovation leader

Leaders who are able to build and sustain an innovation culture share a few characteristics. Each of these characteristics of an innovation leader can be manifested in your actions as a leader – actions you can take to improve the business innovation culture in your organization:

• passionate about innovation – Innovation leaders are passionate about innovation. You can use this to improve the innovation culture by becoming emotionally involved. Show you care about the projects employees are working on. Then, communicate your passion and confidence to your staff. Use different techniques to motivate employees – when they care deeply about their work, their coworkers, and their company, they'll feel more like owners instead of employees.
• willing to experiment – Innovation leaders accept risks and uncertainty, modeling courage, and demonstrate willingness to think outside the box. They're passionate about innovation and are willing to experiment.
• realistic and informed – Innovation leaders know how to balance creativity and emotion with a realistic outlook and pragmatic risk management. Encourage creativity and passion, but don't recklessly pursue every idea that comes to mind, or constantly change course. Take calculated risks, but if it seems there's a strong chance the project will fail, pull the plug. One of the principles of risk management is to consider your organization's level of risk tolerance. If shareholders or upper management are risk adverse, you must be more careful than if they're risk tolerant.
• capable of rapid project execution – Innovation leaders have a knack for spotting opportunities. They identify good ideas and rapidly turning them into business ventures that can provide a time advantage over competitors. To rapidly execute projects, you need clear and achievable goals a view of the steps needed to accomplish these goals. Innovation leaders don't settle for who's available; they pick a "dream team" and leverage people's talents.
• able to attract and nurture innovators – Leaders should search for innovators in employment-related activities, such as recruiting, hiring, and developing employees. The best way to attract innovators to your company – and then allow them to flourish – is to create a workplace where new ideas take root and turn into success stories. As you reward creativity and work that leads to innovation, your reputation as an innovation leader will allow you to attract and retain the very best employees in your field.

You can find innovation leaders at almost every level of an organization. These leaders are committed to both top-down and bottom-up innovation. Because innovation is different from most other business endeavors, it requires different attitudes and behaviors. Leaders who are able to build and sustain an innovation culture share a few characteristics, which map to the characteristics of an innovation culture. They're passionate about innovation, willing to experiment, realistic and informed, capable of rapid project execution, and able to attract and nurture innovators.

One of your first tasks when building a team is to establish team goals. Typically, you can do this in one of two ways. You can establish the goals yourself, or you can elect to take a collaborative approach and involve your team's members.

A collaborative approach can help to build a stronger team in several ways:

• it enhances personal commitment to achieving goals
• it drives performance
• it strengthens job commitment and satisfaction, and
• it promotes shared responsibility for goals

Another way that collaboratively establishing goals strengthens teams is by helping to create a sense of balanced authority within your team. Unlike dictatorial leadership, an open and collaborative leadership style encourages a team mentality by creating a sense of inclusion and ownership.

This open, collaborative, nondictatorial approach to establishing goals also provides several other team strengthening benefits:

• it creates a cooperative team atmosphere rather than superior-subordinate relationship
• it shows you value team member contributions, ideas, and efforts
• it demonstrates the confidence you have in team members' capabilities, and
• it demonstrates that you understand each member's role and how they contribute to the team

Next, a collaborative approach to establishing team goals helps to establish effective goals. When team members are involved, the team goals are more effective as a result of the team members' perspective, expertise, and insight. Involving team members helps to refine team goals, ensuring they're realistic and results focused, which in turn can help to maximize team output.

Taking part in the goal-writing process also allows team members to grow professionally. As they work to write goals, team members will develop both their interpersonal and professional skills.

Using a process to establish team goals

Establishing team goals collaboratively provides a framework for building a successful team that achieves its common goals. You can use a four-step process to establish team goals:

• write goals
• categorize goals
• discuss the categories and clarify the goals, and
• create a single goal for each category

Collaboratively establishing team goals is a terrific team-building activity. It also helps to create a clear vision of the team's priorities and purpose for all team members. Team leaders should be prepared to lead their teams through the process of establishing team goals. The four-step process consists of writing goals, categorizing goals, discussing the categories and clarifying the goals, and creating a single goal for each category. Essentially, a collaborative approach helps a team optimize its efforts through joint, concentrated contributions.

The top 3 barriers to effective listening are distractions, misinterpretations and attachment to personal beliefs and values.These barriers can prevent you from getting or understanding the message you are hearing.1. Distractions
 We get distracted by what is going on outside (our surroundings) and inside ourselves.What’s outside that distracts us while trying to listen to someone? Noises, temperature, or what other people are saying or doing.What’s inside that distracts us from listening to someone? Thoughts, thoughts and more thoughts. Thoughts as memories, judgments, opinions, expectations, worries, fears. Even thoughts about thoughts.Both, internal and external distractions can be overcome by directing your attention to the speaker. You can learn improve your focus by doing exercises to improve your mindfulness2. Attachment to personal beliefs and valuesOur personal beliefs and values are dear to us; they're an integral part of our point of view. We tend to find facts and evidence that support our views and we dismiss anything that weakens them.Over time we find that we’ve developed a strong bond to our point of view, we may be proud of our views and defend them if need be. Sometimes we may get into arguments with people that have a different point of view. At best, we may judge them for not knowing better; at worst, we may try to persuade them to view things our way.Having a strong bond to our point of view is among the toughest barriers to effective listening. When people are expressing a different point of view, we may be thinking how wrong they are, or what we’ll say to convince them of our truth, or we may get defensive about them trying to convince us of their truth.Overcoming this barrier to listening is straightforward: Reduce or eliminate any strong attachments to your point of view; consider your point of view just one view among many. Be curious about others’ point of views and the reasons why they hold them. Replace attachment with curiosity, your listening will improve dramatically.3. MisinterpretationsWhen we add an interpretation to what someone's saying or doing, we introduce possible errors in communication. When the message is clear and obvious, our interpretation may be correct, and we feel justified in continue to interepret what others say. We may even congratulate ourselves in being so good at guessing what others’ intentions are behind the words they say.Case in point: An executive I know told me recently that she knew she was "invisible" to the CEO. I asked her why. She said: “because when I ran into him at the hallway, he didn’t say hi to me.” then she added: "and I'm very good at reading people". Perhaps the CEO was deep in thought that day, or mad at her. Or perhaps he tends to be aloof. Or perhaps she is invisible to him.We don’t know what's the real reason for the CEO not greeting the executive on that day, unless we ask him. Even then we may not get the complete truth, but at least we will be closer to it.To overcome this barrier to listening, get in the habit of asking for clarification on matters that are important to you. We can interpret on everyday matters, but it’s best to make sure we get the right interpretation on more important matters.Overcoming barriers to effective listening• When you find yourself getting distracted with either internal or external noise, pay attention by being mindful.• When you discover any attachment to your point of view, ease up on the attachment or completely let go of it. Become curious about other points of view.• When a speaker says something unclear, avoid misinterpretations by asking the speaker what he meant. Now you know the top 3 barriers to effective listening,
...and you also know how to overcome them.

As a manager, one of your jobs is to turn your employees into leaders. To do this, they need to know what's expected of them, and when they're succeeding. Think about your role as a leader. How do you know when you're successful? How do you know you're "hitting the mark?"

It begins with knowing what "the mark" is. People can't measure up if they don't know what the expectations are. Therefore, an important tool for both the employee and the manager is a written performance agreement.

A written performance agreement is a way for you and your employee to discuss and agree upon performance outcomes. It specifies the who, what, when, where, and how of performance expectations.

Writing a performance agreement should be a collaborative effort between the manager and the employee. Each takes a part in identifying strategies for meeting expectations and setting goals. Written performance agreements:

• align corporate goals and values
• are collaborative agreements written by both parties
• define expectations clearly
• have measurable outcomes
• identify job-specific outcomes
• are uniform tracking and appraisal systems

The object is to have a clear communication that is written down. The employee knows where he stands and what is expected. In addition, remember that a written performance agreement is part of a process, and processes evolve and improve. Both you and the employee will be involved in fine-tuning as you proceed.

Before you begin, ask your staff member to spend a little time thinking about his goals. They will be incorporated into part of the performance agreement. Often employees will bring a list of goals that are impossible to achieve or impossible to measure. This is the "evolving" part of the process. Any goals that are not measurable or not achievable will become clear, and should be addressed and altered accordingly.

As you're writing performance expectations, you and your employee should make them as clear as possible. To do this, you can use the SMART model. SMART stands for:

• S: Specific
• M: Measurable
• A: Attainable
• R: Realistic
• T: Timely

A written performance agreement can be a useful, powerful tool for both of you. Most importantly, it can pay off in employee pride and company profits.

The way you reply to e-mail messages can have a major impact on your work and business relationships.To ensure you reply to an e-mail message appropriately, you should always

• edit the addresses in the Cc field to ensure you copy only people who require the information you include in your response
• update the subject line to keep the e-mail current and ensure recipients can identify what the message covers and find it easily in their inboxes, and
• include the original thread to keep a record of all the communication that has taken place before you send a response, including the original message and any previous replies; if no thread is included, recipients may have to search for and read other e-mails to determine what you're referring to

If you choose the Reply All option to create a response e-mail, your reply will automatically be addressed to all recipients of the original message. Although Reply All is a powerful feature, it is often used incorrectly. When you reply to all, you're assuming that everyone on the e-mail's original distribution list wants – or needs – to receive your response. This often isn't the case.When using the Reply All facility, remember these best practices:

• avoid overusing it – replying to all is only appropriate if every recipient in the To and Cc fields needs to read your response
• Bcc recipients must avoid it, because replying to all will reveal their identity and the fact that they were secretly copied, and
• avoid it for personal messages of thanks or agreement – you should send "thank you" and "me too" replies to the direct recipient

When replying to an e-mail message, you should edit the addresses in the Cc field to ensure your response goes only to people who need to receive it. You should also update the subject line and include the thread of the e-mail below your reply.It's important to use the Reply All feature correctly when responding to e-mails. You should avoid it especially if you were included as a Bcc recipient of an original e-mail. It also isn't appropriate to send messages of thanks or agreement to all recipients. These are better sent as personal, direct messages.

Managing your team during each of the stages of team development can be a challenge. Each stage will require different skills and strategies for motivating team members, making decisions, delegating authority, and dealing with conflict.

The stages of team development are sequential and developmental. Each stage has issues that must be resolved before the team can move to the next stage. An effective project manager recognizes the stage a team is in, and manages accordingly.

In the Forming stage, team members are unsure of their roles and responsibilities. To move to the next stage, the project manager needs to provide structure and clear direction, so that they become comfortable with their responsibilities and with each other.

In the Storming stage, conflicting viewpoints and personal agendas lead to conflict. To move to the next stage, the project manager must mediate cooperation and encourage a team identity.

In the Norming stage, the team becomes cohesive. Differences, responsibilities, and working standards are settled by negotiation. To move to the next stage, the project manager must encourage communication and guide the team toward a reliable pattern of productive work.

In the Performing stage, the team is highly productive and largely self-directed. Team members employ effective and efficient working practices. The project manager must encourage team interdependence. It is important to supervise productivity to maintain the momentum of this stage.

In the Adjourning stage, the focus shifts from the performance of tasks to the end of the project and the disbandment of the group. The project manager must make sure work is complete. This is the time to help team members accept closure by encouraging them to keep in touch with each other, and by giving and receiving feedback.

Each project team will take a unique path through the stages of team development. Some teams will go through the early stages of team development quickly. Others may stall, or regress at certain stages. Much depends on the composition of the team, the capabilities of the team members, the tasks and objectives of the project, and the external support system.

Being able to deliver successful presentations is a valuable management skill. Getting your message across effectively is crucial and can have an impact on both your credibility and your work.

You may have to make presentations to senior managers on behalf of your team, or to outside organizations on behalf of your company. In either case, you will be expected to perform well.

Strategies for preparing a presentation

As with any form of communication, careful preparation will make your presentations more effective. When preparing a presentation, you should

• Define the purpose – It is important that you are clear about what you want to say. Aim to keep it short and simple.
• Know and involve your audience – You need to understand your audience members, particularly their interests and knowledge levels.
• Structure the material – It is important to organize your content in a logical way.
• Use the venue and aids appropriately – The aids you use should enhance your presentation, not detract from it.

Suggestions for an effective presentation

Think about some of the recent presentations you have attended. How effective were they? What was it that contributed to the level of effectiveness?

Here are some suggestions for effective presentations:

• Purpose – Determine whether you want to motivate, inform, or persuade your audience.
• Audience – Determine how many people will attend your presentation. Will they have knowledge about the subject? Will they be interested? Will you be talking to a number of different groups? Will some people find the topic controversial?
• Structure – To gain audience members' interest and maintain their concentration, you will need to structure your content well. Stick to three or four main points so you do not overwhelm your audience with detail. Take questions from the audience so you can clarify any misunderstandings.
• Venue and aids – Make sure the room is big enough, the lighting is adequate, and the temperature is comfortable. Determine whether everyone will be able to see and hear you. A few effective graphics and handouts can enhance your presentation, but too many may only distract or confuse your audience.

Involve your audience

Presentations are more successful when the audience feels involved. As a presenter, you should be prepared to ask your audience questions and invite questions from audience members.

Presenters can tell by their listeners' body language whether they are engaged, bored, or confused. Taking their cues from the audience, presenters can identify when they should speed up, slow down, or summarize.

Making a presentation can be a daunting prospect, but careful preparation can help ensure that you get your message across.