Lessons on Leadership

 Photo via Startup Stock Photos

Earlier this month, I attended an interesting and engaging Fred Pryor seminars called Leadership, Team-building, and Coaching Skills.

Plummer Bailor was the instructor, and he was very interesting to listen to from the beginning. He is originally from West Africa and provided his life’s history and detailed the job and leaderships positions he has went through over the years.

He provided the expectations of our schedule at the very beginning so there were no questions on what we would get out of this seminar.

Bailor started off with explaining what Gamification is and how this applies to our job and leadership. This is a newer term that is heard around workplaces, but it simply means to make a work environment more like a game.

As today lots of people are playing games and can play many hours and enjoy games. This makes the work environment fun and engaging with mini successes and short goals, much like a game.

The seminar outlined the 10 pillars of leadership which all leadership type roles should try to follow. Bailor did recommend to not leave the seminar and start doing all of these right away. Instead, he suggested we pick one and work on it.

Then, over time you should be able to master most of these pillars as a leader.

For those who don’t know, the 10 pillars are:

1. Leaders are Learners – Always try new techniques and learn about your team

2. Leaders Engage – Keep everyone on interested in the task/project

3. Leaders Affirm – Recognize anyway even if they don’t want you to, do so anyway

4. Leaders Delegate – People grow this way

5. Leaders Empower – Have others make decisions on their own

6. Leaders Relate – Provide a common ground with others

7. Leaders Support – provide all your knowledge and support when needed

8. Leaders Help  - Let them ask for help and be available to help always

9. Leaders Inspire – Be a person the others want to be

10. Leaders Promote – Name Drop Employees to managers

We went over some topics on how to engage your team to work together and efficiently on your project. Free choice to participate; hand over some control to your team members by asking how they would handle the problem or task.

This provides ownership which is motivating as they are brainstorming the common goal. Incorporate some fun; Bailor suggested we bring in a karaoke machine, or we do some team building by doing a cooking class together.

We went over the key skills for leading a loyal team, EX-DEM-PRA, which means, Explain, Demonstrate and Practice.

This then lead off to a group session we did in the seminar to discuss how we can use EX-DEM-PRA in certain situations. For example, an employee may put off the start of new projects.

To resolve this type of situation, you will need to set expectations and goals of the task, show what needs to be updated or changed and then expect feedback immediately if their needs to be additional training or information on the task.

Overall this was a great seminar and provides a lot of information that you can take back and start working on. I would suggest anyone who is thinking about being in a leader role or currently is in a leader role should attend this seminar.

I learned a lot and have been working on my pillars of leadership, which my team has been responding very well to.

Fred Pryor: http://www.pryor.com/site/default.aspx