Читать книгу Your First Leadership Job - Wellins Richard S. - Страница 8

This book isn't based on one person's theory, a cobbled-together dataset, or an inspiring true story of running one campaign or landing a plane under difficult circumstances. (Some of these books are terrific, and we love them. They're just not what you need right now.) Instead, we're giving you specific, actionable information about what to do and how to do it, based it on a combination of hands-on experience and decades of solid research.

We include what we've learned from helping companies make thousands of frontline leadership selection and promotion decisions each year. We tell you about the competencies and attributes that lead to successful frontline leadership performance based on extensive job analyses we've conducted with hundreds of organizations – and how to develop them within yourself, starting today. And perhaps, most of all, when we call something a best practice, that claim is backed by dozens of research studies that demonstrate the impact of that practice on organizational performance.

At DDI, we believe that better leadership is far more science than art. Yet, it is based in a deep respect for and understanding of the people side of leadership. We believe that people can transform their relationships in work and life by modifying their behavior in simple, clear, and measurable ways. We've trained and sat with hundreds of new leaders just like you and personally shared the advice that's in this book. You'll hear some of their stories in these pages.

Although you can open this book at any point and find immediate solutions to problems you may be experiencing, we hope you first spend some quality time on the first section. These nine chapters distill DDI's work on early leadership and provide the best foundation for starting your leadership journey.

The second section is a deeper dive into some of the key skills you'll need to master in order to succeed. These mastery and leadership skills chapters can be read sequentially, or you can jump to the chapter that best meets your current need. Expect short, specialized content to help you tackle the nuts and bolts of mastering your new position. You'll also find checklists and discussion guides that you can use immediately in your working life. Revisit them often. And through our “Your First Leadership Job” microsite, we offer links to bonus chapters, online resources, content, and communities that can help you connect with other leaders in transition. You'll want to bookmark this site and return to it frequently:

www.YourFirstLeadershipJob.com

The book also includes exercises, quizzes, diagnostics, and other interactive tools in every chapter. We encourage you to explore them. Designed by orga-nizational psychologists, they've been proven effective over the years. Use them and you'll be more successful.. and find your job more enjoyable.

In addition to the research cited throughout this book, you'll meet real people who have shared their experiences as first-time leaders. Each story conveys a lesson, insight, success story, or cautionary tale. (We've changed names and masked companies to encourage candor.) We've also queried people via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Quora, looking for stories and inspiration from their own leadership journeys. You'll find results from our questions and surveys throughout the book.

If you have one takeaway from this book, it should be this: Great leadership takes place every day, in the smallest of ways. It is reflected first and foremost in your conversations, the way you influence others, and how you interact with the people on your team and in your network. But the first step in your leadership journey is to think of yourself not as a boss, but as someone who can and should ignite a chain reaction of effectiveness that positively impacts direct reports, customers, vendors, peers, and supervisors alike. Your journey starts with a very specific kind of spark.