The following contains excerpts from the book Leadership Mastery (Dale Carnegie Training).
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we teach students that music is more than sound, it is relationships. In dealing with every relationship, the foundational understanding of leadership becomes important. We encourage our teachers and our students to gain a healthy respect for the subject of leadership and the continual application of learning how to interact with and serve others.
Although the Carnegie Training Institute is comprised of later generations of leadership teachers, they frequently draw from Dale Carnegie’s teachings, extending his core leadership principles to our current times.
“The only way to differentiate yourself and your business is to become exceptionally skilled at leading and persuading others. Think of it: In the previous era of hierarchical organizations, big government, and traditional families, the need for leadership was evident…However, in an era of flattened organizations, the increasing irrelevance of government, and two-career families, we no longer have a clear set of rules to follow. What’s more, the command-and-control leaders who try to hold us to seemingly irrelevant and arbitrary rules are no longer successful. What’s needed is an new type of leader, one who can inspire and motivate others within this virtual world while never losing sight of the leadership principles that never change…we’ll introduce you to a new type of leader: a leader who is flexible and adaptable…who is a servant, not a slave, to his or her partners; a distributor of power, trustworthy, tough, and decisive…In the past, an order from the boss may have given the employee enough want. Today leaders must create that want by engaging other in the mission with same goals but by different processes.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we strive to help students discover an exciting path of self-discovery and unique creativity, enabling them to find passion and mission in their process of learning and developing. Instead of dictating to them what they must want, we help them explore their own desires and capabilities.
“The word ‘leader’, for example, can no longer bear any resemblance to the word boss. Bosses have subordinates or subjects or followers. Today’s true leaders have not followers in the conventional sense of the word. Leadership masters even go a step further by transforming followers into other leaders…personal qualities beyond traditional leadership virtues: qualities like toughness and decision-making ability, flexibility, innovation, and the ability to accommodate sudden change. These traits are now absolutely essential…In today’s world, it is almost impossible for a purely authoritarian style of leadership to remain successful over the long term. People just won’t put up with it. And society has changed so that they don’t have to.”
“There’s another reason why old-style leaders can’t survive today, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the pressure they put on other people. It has everything to do with the pressure they put on themselves in a fast-changing, complex, and even chaotic world. There’s nothing to be gained by claiming to know all the answers, even if you can fool other people into believing you. there’s no way you can fool yourself, and living a lie can be very tiring…investigations revealed that even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering: the personality and the ability to lead people. The individual who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, assume leadership, and arouse enthusiasm among people is the person headed for higher earning power.”
Basic Leadership Qualities
- Legitimate authority- a person who has a vision, who knows how to communicate it, and who can make that vision our own.
- Authentic self-belief – leaders think, feel, and know they have the power to rise above challenges and make positive results possible…very often this belief in themselves is grounded in the leader’s own technical expertise.
- Confidence with flexibility- They have convictions…however, they are not stubborn…have the ability to really listen.
- Acceptance of risk- a leader needs to take a chance.
- Determination- leaders don’t give up without a fight. Successes do not always come easily, but leaders keep trying and trying again until they and their group succeed. Leaders know that the vast majority of goals are achievable if the desire is strong enough, and they act accordingly.
Successful communication is essential to leadership. In order to communicate expectations effectively, a leader must do the following: 1) Focus of the big picture, 2) Be ambitious, 3) Know yourself, 4) Be decisive, 5) Control stress, 6) Accept criticism, 7) listen, 8) Be flexible, 9) Be supportive, 10) Encourage people, 11) Celebrate success, 12) Back your staff, 13) Help out, 14) Accept responsibility, 15) Solve problems, 16) Lead by example, 17) Do the right thing, 18) Be honest, 19) Avoid gossip, 20) Do your best, 21) Criticize constructively.
“Beneath the surface…of truly masterful leadership communication, however, there is a deeper purpose. In a word, it is motivation…leadership’s foundation contains qualities such as integrity, honesty, humility, courage, commitment, sincerity, passion, confidence, wisdom, determination, compassion, sensitivity, and personal charisma…dominant leader is rarely appropriate, however, especially in well-established organizations…It’s often more about serving that leading. Teams respond best to gratitude, encouragement, recognition, and inclusiveness. Tough, dominant leadership gives people a lot to push against and resist. It also blocks any sense of ownership and empowerment among those being led.”
We want students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to feel a sense of ownership in the process of interacting with their instructors and their community. They own the direction and process of creative endeavors as they step out into new territories of learning and development.
Theory of Motivation
All people have a desire to be successful and important. Harvard professor David McClelland (1917-98) developed a theory of motivation showing the three most important motivational factors in others:
- The need for achievement- motivated by results and therefore seeks achievement, attainment of realistic but challenging goals, and advancement in the job. There is a strong need for feedback on progress.
- The need for authority and power- to be influential, effective, and impactful. There is a motivation toward increasing personal status and prestige.
- The need for affiliation- needs friendly relationships and is motivated toward interaction with other people. There is a need to be liked and held in popular regard.
- “In the end, McClelland argues that people with strong achievement motivation make the best leaders, although they may demand too much of their staffs in the belief that they are all similarly and highly achievement focused and results driven, which of course most people are not.”
As a leader, one of your foremost responsibilities is letting your team members know that you respect them, that you appreciate them, and that you want to help them achieve their full potential.
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we let each student know that they are valuable, important and unique.
In order to successfully motivate others, a leader must be able to successfully motivate himself. This is done by learning how to set worthy and realistic goals. “So as a leader, you simply must make goal-setting a top priority. You should set goals that are challenging but also achievable, and that are clear and measurable. These goals should take the form of short-term plans as well as long-term objectives.”
One of the hallmarks of leadership talent is this one simple truth: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you…people can’t help responding to people who are sincerely interested in them…taking genuine interest is the one basic talent that makes all other talents possible. When you have it, there’s no limit to how far you can move ahead. When you don’t have it, it’s unlikely any of your other abilities will be recognized.”
Teachers at our music school in Odessa, Texas are focused on the unique potential that each student possesses.
Four Talents of Leadership Masters
- Optimism- the belief that things will turn out well. Optimists refuse to take no for an answer. They bounce back. When things go wrong they don’t believe that they do because this is how the universe is constructed. Instead they see it as a temporary glitch.
- Cheerfulness- in China happiness is associated with intelligence and tenacity, particularly as people mature. A person who has faced life’s trials and retains the ability to be happy must be a strong person, a survivor, someone qualified to lead.
- Creativity- the ability to make something of value out of something of lesser value…the ability to make something of value out of nothing at all. A different form of creativity takes place when a dream is turned into a reality, when a thought becomes a tangible object that can benefit yourself or perhaps the world.
- The ability to overcome setbacks- resilience, or the capacity to rebound from disappointments.
Effective leaders set the tone for their organizations. “No one can really discredit leaders who are the hardest-working individuals in their organizations. And very few people can match their results. Hard work always beats lazy talent, and talented hard work trumps everything.”
We believe it is important for teachers to be able to demonstrate excellence to the students of our music school in Odessa Texas, having the capability to lead and teach by example.
Leaders must embrace risk, and encourage those they lead to do the same. “If you expect people to develop into leaders, you can’t tell them they’ll be fired if they don’t hit a home run every time they swing the bat…ask yourself a very simple question: ‘How willing am I to tolerate risk?’ The question is not how much risk you are willing to tolerate, but are you willing to tolerate any risk at all?”
“Studies of wealthy entrepreneurs show that intuition is their guide.”
“Risk is essential and once you’ve committed yourself to accepting a certain amount of risk as a step toward leadership mastery, there are ways to make it easier in your everyday life
“Security is mostly a superstition,” Helen Keller wrote. “It does not exist in nature…Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”