Four clusters of actions characterize business leadership.  

Choice:  Adopt the right vision.

Clarity:  Develop rich, renewable specifications for the vision.

Commitment:  Persuade active support of the vision.

Change:  Turn the vision into practical, operational reality.

Choice is about the person - leadership as a matter of who the leader is.  Clarity is about the vision - leadership as a matter of what the desired change is.  Communication is about buy in - building a team.  Change is about process - leadership as a practical precursor to management.

Choice  

Business leaders may or may not be visionaries.  Ideas may come from anywhere, including the competition.  Effective leaders discover and focus on the gems among competing visions.

A leader’s ability to choose often seems magical to those around leaders.  How can they decide so quickly and strongly in the face of so many options in an environment of rampant change?

Choosing the vision requires a basis for decisions.  Business leaders need foundations in:

Knowledge:  In-depth understanding of company, customers, markets, competitors, other market forces, and trends in all of these

Expertise:  Powerful capabilities in relevant business and technical processes

Strategy:  A visionary, big-picture perspective that connects all actions to recognized goals

Self awareness:  Conscious, proactive, authentic integrity

To build their foundations, leaders constantly learn and develop skills by testing new knowledge in practice.  These fundamentals establish quality of performance that builds trust by others.

The real test of performance, of course, is knowing the right actions to take.  That requires a special set of knowledge and expertise - abilities to set the right goals and choose the right methods to reach those goals.  This skill sets leaders apart from others.

Behind the scenes of decision making is the person and his/her paradigms and beliefs.  Personal integrity is visible to others, yet may be hard for an individual to define.  The better we know ourselves, the better we are at leading.

A last personal characteristic is confidence.  Leaders make huge decisions with substantial impact.  Their foundations enable the confidence needed to choose one option in the midst of chaos, then act on it.

Clarity 
 
Effective business leaders flesh out their visions in great detail, creating specific goals toward which to work.  That detail enables communication as the next step.

Clarification processes test the validity and value of the vision.  Strategic questions delve into the vision, discovering its strengths and weaknesses.  Questions asked from “customer” perspectives establish how well the vision will be accepted.

Clarity requires attention to audience.  A vision stated clearly for a technical audience may be completely opaque to non-technical people.  Stated in terms management appreciates, the vision may leave staff cold.  A clear vision thus requires multiple yet consistent articulations.

Truly “rich” visions have names, functions, and personalities.  We can relate to a rich vision almost as we would relate to a person.  A rich vision enables a relationship with many types of stakeholders, without conflict and with full buy in at all levels.

Commitment  

With a clear, rich vision, a leader becomes a marketer.  In effect, the vision becomes a product, and the product is marketed to stakeholders (those who will change or participate in implementing the vision).

This phase is really about persuasion.  Leaders need committed teams, and those teams must grow over time.  Without buy-in at all critical levels and in all relevant stakeholders, change won’t happen as envisioned.

Persuasion always begins with communications.  Just as the vision may need multiple articulations, so communications certainly require customization.

Stakeholder-centered communications connect with target audiences at both intellectual and emotional levels.  Effective leaders connect first at levels of needs and benefits -  at levels of hope, pain, fear, and joy. 

With a connection established, leaders present visions as pictures of needs met.  Stakeholders are ready to accept because they’ve been reminded of their needs.  The clincher shows how the target audience can share in implementing the vision.  The best leaders create true ownership of the vision by those whose lives will be changed.

Persuasion eventually comes down to relationships.  Leaders build trust through excellence in decision making, communicating, and implementing strategies.  That trust strengthens relationships which lead to commitments and buy-in to the next level of vision where excellent performance leads to greater trust.

Change

This phase is initiated by leaders and completed by managers.  Leaders perform the strategic steps; managers implement tactics.

The key to success in any change is being strategic - connecting every action to goals.  Thus the first step in the change phase sets durable, long-term goals as strategic directions. 

The level of the goals depends on the level of the vision.  Corporate goals set directions for implementing a corporate vision.  Product goals set directions for implementing a product vision. 

Goals nest, so leadership can be found at every level.  Product goals fit within company goals; leaders of a product vision work within the corporate vision established by the senior management team.

Long term goals logically resolve into short-term objectives.  Strategies are methods (actions) for reaching objectives.  Strategizing determines how the vision will be implemented.

Every strategy comes with a cost.  Product development requires expertise, facilities, funding, and other resources.  Implementing the vision requires careful balance between choice of strategies and availability of resources.

Every strategy must be owned.  Delegation of responsibility completes the leadership aspect of implementation.  From this point, good management should be able to turn vision into reality.

Leadership can be learned.  The skills are straightforward.  Effective leadership comes from experience gained applying the skills over time.

Thus the first step is to learn the skills and develop a mindset oriented toward using the skills as often as possible.  

Reprinted from Four-C Leadership by Dr. Gary Lundquist, 1-877-841-1411.” Dr. Lundquist accelerates corporate performance with practical, productive experience and expertise in strategic marketing. He integrates strengths in general management, product management, entrepreneurship, technology transfer, science, engineering, consulting, and professional speaking.