A short motivational talk by Brian Tracy explaining that leadership is learned through continuous personal development. He outlines three central qualities of effective leaders—focusing on strengths, acting as a role model, and maintaining integrity/trust—and gives practical advice (e.g., concentrate on your strengths, be mindful of words/behavior, and avoid dishonest bosses). The talk encourages deliberate practice to gain respect and improve managerial results.
Hello, I'm Brian Tracy. If you aspire to become an inspirational and effective leader, you must continuously work on yourself and improve your management skills. No one starts off as an effective leader or manager, but you can aspire to improve your skills by learning what leaders do and how they think and how they feel, and then by copying them until you become one. You're Remember, leaders are made, not born, and they are self made. Through personal development. I'll discuss with you some of the qualities of successful leaders you can focus on to strengthen your leadership skills and get more results, better, faster, easier from other people. Now, the first quality of effective leaders is their ability to focus on strengths. They focus on the strengths in themselves, what they're really good at, and on the strengths in others, what they are really good at. The fact of the matter is that strong people have far more weaknesses, including yourself, than they have strengths. You can never achieve greatness in leadership by simply compensating for your weaknesses. But you can become an outstanding manager by identifying your areas of great potential strength, what you like to do and what you do well, and then by focusing all of your energies on becoming outstanding in those few areas. You only have to be really good in two or three areas for you to move to the top of your field. Another important quality of an effective leader is to be a role model, to be the kind of person that everyone else looks up to and wants to be like. This is true in your work, in your personal life, it's true in your family, but it's also true as a manager. Effective leaders carry themselves at all times, even when no one is watching, as if everyone was watching. Leaders imagine that they live in a goldfish bowl and everyone is watching the leader in the leadership role. They are very aware of the impact of their words and gestures on the people around them. They realize that what they say has tremendous impact. So you must always be sensitive to the fact that everything you say or do is magnified many times by the people who look up to you or look up to you for guidance. A positive remark from you to someone over whom you exert influence or control has inordinately positive effects. A negative remark or criticism from you has inordinately negative effects. The impact of both are multiplied. So choose your words and your behavior with care. A third, and perhaps the most important and respected leadership quality is integrity. It's the most required and most admired quality of all people, but especially of the effective leader. You see, trust is the quality that binds all relationships, personal and business, together. The willingness and ability to trust the people that you look up to and report to is absolutely essential to your ability to perform at your very best. Sometimes people come up to me at my seminars and tell me that they like their jobs, but they don't particularly like their bosses. I tell them over and over that one of the most important things you do is if you want to be successful at work, is to choose your boss with care. I have seen very few occasions where a person has been successful under a negative or dishonest boss with poor management skills. In most cases, you're wasting your life and your career by staying in a situation with a negative or untrustworthy person because the situation has no future. So practice these qualities of the most successful and effective leaders to hone your skills for leadership success. Only by continuously improving on your skills will you gain the respect and admiration that you deserve.
