Manager To Leader

By Thomas Lawrence

Are you a manager or a supervisor? Do you feel the need to GROW into a leader?

 

Do you want to learn how to become a highly effective leader?

 

People don't realise that leadership is a role of service. It is the leader's job to serve their people, not for the people to serve their leader. At the end of the day, leadership is about influencing people, NOT managing people or telling them what to do. In this book you will learn techniques that are not textbook or strictly conventional but through learning from personal experiences, personal mistakes and generally caring for people.

 

As leaders, it is up to us to lead by example and show our people that we care for them. When leading by example, we are also building relationships, building trust and increasing our influence. Without these three things, it is impossible to lead. This book will teach you how to achieve all three and how to inspire your people to do the same.

 

"Manager To Leader" will help you to uncover:

 

• The difference between management and leadership.
• How to go beyond your position of manager and inspire your people.
• How to lead by example and show your people that you care for them.
• How to build strong relationships and build trust with your people.
• How to increase your influence with your people.

 

Follow the advice in this book and you will become the best leader you can be. When you have finished reading this book you will be in a position to teach others how to become the best leaders they can be.

 

What's stopping you from becoming a highly effective leader and making a positive difference in the world and in people's lives?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Lawrence
• Release date: Jan 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838329501

Book preview

MANAGER

TO

LEADER

How to become a highly effective leader

TOM LAWRENCE

Orders: Please contact: https://highlyeffectiveleader.com,

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-8383295-0-1

First published 2021

Copyright © 2021 Thomas Lawrence. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. Apart from any permitted use under UK copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information, storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or under licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Further details of such licenses (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

Printed in Great Britain

DEDICATION

To my family and friends.

I love you all and I am so appreciative of all the support you have given me throughout my life.

CONTENTS

  1 You Have The Leadership Position – What Next?

  2 Does Your Team follow You?

  3 It’s Confidence Not Arrogance

  4 Trust

  5 Are You A Role Model?

  6 Action NOT Plan

  7 How Far Will You Go?

  8 How Do You Treat Your Team?

  9 Leaders Or Followers Or Both?

10 Who Will You Become?

If you’re a know it all, you probably don’t know much

CHAPTER 1

YOU HAVE THE LEADERSHIP POSITION - WHAT NEXT?

How much do you know?

The more you learn and the more you increase your knowledge on a certain topic, pay attention to how much you actually don’t know about it. We are taught to learn and discover new things. But, it’s amazing when we learn and discover how much we didn’t know in the first place.

Have you ever heard the term leaders are readers? When I first heard that, I didn’t think much of it. I just thought it was a given that to be a leader you have to be highly educated, so you must be well read. However, that’s not it at all. To be a leader, you don’t have to know everything. In fact, when I started my first leadership position I realised just how much I don’t know.

So, I began to learn more about leadership. I read books, attended seminars, went to conferences and enrolled in online courses. By doing all of that, I realised even more that I didn’t know a whole lot. It was a bit scary, I must admit.

It’s scary because I keep surprising myself on how much more knowledge I don’t have. Have you had similar experiences? I love learning new things, especially about leadership and personal growth. But, it is not a nice feeling to realise how much more I needed to learn than I originally thought. Although, it is good to now know this, and be aware that I do not know it all.

It seems to happen with every new thing I learn too. I sometimes find myself laughing that my intelligence is nowhere near what I thought it was.

I get asked quite a lot to think outside the box and I’m sure you do too. Or, you have heard others be asked that before. Well, what it means is to think deeper within yourself, and try to draw on information that you may never have thought you had. Now, obviously nobody can know everything about a certain topic. However, there are aspects of a topic that we don’t really know or understand, but we are aware of them.

So, being aware of those aspects is actually being outside of the box. The question is, how do we get what’s outside of the box to inside of the box? That’s easy, we need to learn and increase our knowledge about what’s outside of the box.

You are probably learning about what’s outside of the box right now.

We also need to learn about things that are REALLY outside of the box. These are things that we don’t know anything about at all, not a clue. Again, the question is, how do we get what’s REALLY outside of the box to inside of the box? We need to learn and increase our knowledge about what’s REALLY outside of the box.

As I said earlier, there are things we need to know about that are outside of the box that we currently don’t know, and it’s good that we are at least aware of that. However, we are continuing to learn and increase our knowledge about what’s outside of the box and bringing it inside of the box. This will then leave room to become aware of more things that are outside of the box. We don’t know about them, but our awareness of newer and important things has increased.

So, it becomes a cycle of increased knowledge, awareness, and personal growth. You must make the decision to continue increasing your knowledge or not. If you do, then the cycle will continue and you will constantly grow. If you do not then the cycle will stop and you will remain where you are. Or, after a period of time your knowledge and growth will decrease. That is a position we don’t want to find ourselves in.

I find it amazing, that I now know I need to learn a lot more about things I thought I was quite accomplished in. It makes we wonder about what is actually happening in our brains. We can’t just learn about something once or twice, we need to keep going and growing every day.

I find it funny that the people who usually ask me to think outside the box are people who think they know it all. Do you find that? Actually, it is those people who don’t know a lot, sometimes even less than us. So, they are not aware that they need to also learn a lot more, and because they are not aware, that is what makes them think they know it all. They have an ignorant view on learning and increasing their knowledge. You will find this a lot in low performing leaders.

Now that we know that we have a lot more to learn, we need to be very specific and extremely disciplined in what we learn. For example, by reading this book you are very specifically learning how to become a highly effective leader. We do not want to be filling our brains with knowledge we do not need at all, or will do more harm than good.

I started my career in 1999 as an apprentice mechanical engineer when I was 16. I was working with a large automotive company in Liverpool in the UK. Their service was to build the assembly lines that made the car engines for Ford, Jaguar, Mitsubishi and many other manufacturers.

The apprenticeship was a mix of hands on engineering, and also theoretical engineering in college. This lasted 4 years until I became a fully qualified mechanical engineer.

Very quickly after gaining my qualifications and completing my apprenticeship, everybody was made redundant from the company which was devastating. After a few years of working and being between jobs, I eventually joined the UK rail industry. I started working with the Liverpool train operating company as an engineer. My role was to help improve the performance of the trains, and keep them running for as long as possible in service without failing.

Since starting in the UK rail industry in 2005, I have worked in both England and Scotland. I have climbed the leadership ladder up to deputy head of engineering for a train operating company in London. For all the leadership positions I held, I was never really trained to lead. I went on a few courses for 2 or 3 days at a time. But, nothing compared to the level of my apprenticeship or graduate engineering training.

It amazes me that this happens all over the world, in most industries. People are being asked to lead people without any training. You may not have had any training either.

When I was deputy head of engineering I was leading teams who had safety critical, and very technical roles. It was my job to influence the teams to buy into me and into my ideas. But, how was I going to do that without any real training or knowledge how to? I also needed to change the department and ensure that the teams embraced that change. Again, I had to do this without any training on how to either.

The leadership training that I had received up to then was very basic. So, to climb the leadership ladder to deputy head of engineering was a huge feat for me. I was proud of myself, but I knew for a fact that I had lots and lots to learn about being a leader at this level.

So, I was reading leadership book after leadership book, and watching leadership videos on You Tube. I was attending seminars and conferences, all off my own back and out of my own pocket. If I was to become knowledgeable in the area of leadership, I couldn’t afford to wait for companies to give 2 days’ training here or there. I had to do it for myself.

By reading this book I hope you are of the same mindset, and you are pushing yourself to get the learning and the knowledge of leadership you need. You are going to be doing a lot of thinking outside of the box. You will be so far away from the box that you can’t see it. Get yourself ready to bring what’s outside of the box to inside of the box.

It takes a lot of time and is difficult to learn new things. Keep trying new ways of learning until you find your sweet spot.

How do you define leadership?

Being responsible for people is one of the most difficult and most rewarding things we could ever do. Being responsible for numbers is not. Leaders are responsible for people, managers are responsible for numbers.

Did you know that there was a difference between management and leadership? Chances are you did, but do you know what that difference is? If you do, what would you prefer to experience, management or leadership?

The difference between management and leadership is as follows:

Managers manage processes and look after the numbers. Leaders lead people, take responsibility for people’s lives, and care how their people feel at work.

In my experience, a lot of boss’s or a managers usually treated us as a number and not a human being. It was not a nice feeling. If you have experienced this too, then you will know that same feeling I had. Being made to feel this way had an impact on my performance in some cases. How about you?

When it comes to the current team you are leading, how do they feel when working with you? Are they treated as numbers or as human beings? How are they performing when working within your team and with you? Hopefully they are performing well, and you are treating them as human beings.

The reason I am asking you these questions is because I want you to be honest with yourself, and look within. To be a really a good or a great leader is very hard work, and takes time. However, it also takes honesty. We need to be honest with ourselves.

It is very easy to look at our own boss or leader and give our opinions. But, it is not easy to look within ourselves and give our opinions. It takes a lot of hard work. The more hard work you do at looking within, and accepting who you really are. Then this will start to show on the outside, and your team will begin to feel that.

At the moment you are either working hard on your leadership. Or, I hope you are planning to so that you can become a highly effective leader. If you are planning on just being a manager, then you are already treating your people as numbers and not human beings, or you are planning to. Managers and supervisors who treat their people as numbers do not want to become highly effective leaders, so this book is not for them. However, managers and supervisors who already treat their people as human beings and want to become highly effective leaders, then this book is definitely for them. Is this you?

If you decide to become a highly effective leader then I will make a promise right now to help you achieve this.

If you are a manager, to most people that just means you hold a position of power or authority. With this book I want you to go much further than that. I don’t want you to stop at being a manager, I want you to strive to become a highly effective leader. It is not very difficult to hold a position of power as a manager and do a pretty good job. But, it is much more difficult to be a highly effective leader with the job title of manager