Are leaders born or made? One could argue for either position.

The real issue is that all leaders can improve. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or a high-potential team member, you can boost your performance in five crucial leadership areas.

More than half a million business books deal with leadership acumen, but studying the most respected experts’ ideas reveals a consensus on the foremost roles required for effectiveness. (photo courtesy renjith krishnan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

In The Leadership Code, Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood and Kate Sweetman have synthesized current thinking on leadership and developed a framework that blends idealism with realism. They’ve distilled leadership into five core rules, regardless of one’s industry or business environment:

Having a framework for the most essential leadership skills will help you avoid quick fixes and business-book fads. While the scope of leadership may seem overwhelming, five golden rules provide much-needed focus. It’s easy to get lost if you pursue the wrong priorities.

This article summarizes the five essential rules for leadership effectiveness and provides a framework that covers the entire leadership landscape, so that you can focus on the best ways to develop your talent.
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This is a brief synopsis of an 1800 & 950-word article and Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

The complete 1800-word article includes these important concepts:

• Five Golden Rules
• Rule 1: Shape the future
• Rule 2: Make things happen
• Rule 3: Engage today’s talent
• Rule 4: Build the next generation
• Rule 5: Invest in yourself
• A Review of Leadership Theories
• Understanding the Five Roles
• Personal Proficiency

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It doesn’t matter whether your goal is to lose 5 or 50 pounds, quit smoking or stop drinking. New Year’s resolutions and other goals are hard to keep beyond the first month. Change is hard.

Why? Because the brain is tricky. No matter how sincerely we want to break a habit, we have an inherent immunity to change.

This means we’re physiologically “lured” into doing what we’ve always done, no matter how strong our intentions. And yet, some people do succeed. We all know ex-smokers, ex-drinkers and former fatties.

You cannot fix an adaptive problem with a technical solution. A diet, for example, is a technical solution to being overweight: To lose weight, eat less and exercise more. But the problem is much more complex. Unless you change your mindset (an adaptive solution), you won’t sustain new habits.

Einstein said that how you formulate a problem is just as critical as how you solve it. One of the biggest mistakes goal-setters make is applying a technical solution to an adaptive problem. It doesn’t matter how much you change what you do. If you don’t shift the way you think, you’ll revert to doing things as you’ve always done them.

This is a brief synopsis of an 825-word article and Article Nuggets* suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.

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