Hello ladies and gentlemen,

I would like to express my appreciation to you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to hear me talk today on the subject of leadership. I would like to use this opportunity to raise the level of leadership consciousness of potential INTJ HPC contractors

I have spent some time recently seriously studying the subject of leadership and during this time I have read numerous books on the subject.  One of the best books in my opinion was by John C Maxwell.  The name of this book is The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader

In today’s speech – I will be summarising the leadership qualities from The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader. I believe that by raising the level of leadership awareness of HPC candidates, that I will be able to identify future leaders amongst you who are living embodiments of the leadership laws who would have no problem fulfilling HPC team leadership and managerial roles in large Australian corporations, academic institutions and government organisations.

Leadership is a collective activity that requires mutual inquiry, learning and a capacity to work with complex challenges.  I believe that everything rises and falls based on leadership. 

This speech is my personal contribution to you - future HPC candidates in the hope that I can recruit effective leaders for future HPC management roles who are able to catalyse commitment to a vision and stimulate HPC system administrators to a high performance standard.  Unfortunately – in this day and age competent managers are just not going to cut it.  The world needs effective leaders. 

So – let me begin by discussing the 21 Indispensible Qualities of a Leader.

What does it take to become a great leader? The kind of person who attracts people and makes things happen?  What are we really looking for when we recruit a new person to the organisation at the management and leadership levels?

CHARACTER

How a leader deals with the circumstances of life tells you many things about his or her character. Crisis doesn’t necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one of two paths: character or compromise. Every time a leader chooses character, he or she becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences.

The development of character is at the heart of our development not just as leaders, but also as human beings.

A leaders words and actions must match – all the time. 

CHARISMA

Most people think of charisma as something mystical, almost undefinable. They think it’s a quality that comes at birth or not at all. But that’s not true. Charisma, plainly stated, is the ability to draw people to you. And like other character traits, it can be developed.

A leader needs to be the type of person who attracts others - who “Puts a ‘10’ on every person’s head.”

One of the best things the leader can do for people — which also attracts them — is to expect the best of them. It helps others think more highly of themselves and, at the same time, it helps the leader.

We need HPC leaders who appreciates the the contributions of HPC System administrators, encourages them and helps them to reach their potential.

COMMITMENT

An effective leader needs to be committed. True commitment inspires and attracts people. It shows them that the leader has conviction.

People will believe in a leader only if the leader believes in a cause.  As the Law of Buy-In states, people buy into the leader, then the vision.

Commitment starts in the heart. To make a difference in other people’s lives, a leader must look into their heart to see if they are really committed.

The only real measure of commitment is action. And there will be times when commitment is the only thing that carries a leader forward.

When it comes to commitment, there are really only four types of people: cop-outs, holdouts, dropouts and all-outs.

COMMUNICATION

The success of a marriage, a job and our personal relationships depends greatly on our ability to communicate. People will not follow us if they don’t know what we want or where we are going.

We can be a more effective communicator if we simplify our message and focus on the people with whom we are communicating.

As we communicate, we must never forget that the goal of all communication is action. If we dump a bunch of information on people, we are not communicating. Every time we speak to people, we must give them something to feel, something to remember and something to do.

COMPETENCE

We all admire people who display high competence, whether they are precision craftsmen, world-class athletes or successful business leaders.

But the truth is that I am not looking to recruit Michael Jordan or Bill Gates. I'm just looking for HPC leaders who show up every day, keep improving, follow through with excellence, accomplish more than expected and inspire others.

A leader who attacks everything with fervour and performs at the highest level possible.  Someone who can see what needs to happen, who can make it happen and who can make things happen when it really counts.

COURAGE

Eleanor Roosevelt acknowledged, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Courage deals with principle, not perception. An effective leader has the ability to see when to stand up and the conviction to do it.  The leaders dedication to potential must remain stronger than the desire to appease others.

What’s ironic is that those who don’t have the courage to take risks and those who do, experience the same amount of fear in life.

DISCERNMENT

Discernment can be described as the ability to find the root of the matter, and it relies on intuition as well as rational thought. Discernment is an indispensable quality for any leader who desires to maximize effectiveness.

People who lack discernment are seldom in the right place at the right time. Although great leaders often appear to be lucky to some observers, it’s more likely that leaders create their own “luck” as the result of discernment, that willingness to use their experience and follow their instincts.

FOCUS

What does it take to have the focus required to be a truly effective leader? The keys are priorities and concentration. A leader who knows his or her priorities but lacks concentration knows what to do but never gets it done. If he or she has concentration but no priorities, he or she has excellence without progress. But when he or she harnesses both, he or she has the potential to achieve great things.

 Focus 70% on strengths –– Effective leaders who reach their potential spend more time focusing on what they do well than on what they do wrong.

Focus 25% on new things –– Growth equals change. If a leader wants to get better they have to keep changing and improving.

Focus 5% on areas of weakness –– Nobody can entirely avoid working in areas of weakness.

GENEROSITY

Nothing speaks to others more loudly or serves them better than generosity from a leader. True generosity isn’t an occasional event. It comes from the heart and permeates every aspect of a leader’s life, touching his or her time, money, talents and possessions.

INTJ needs HPC leaders who look for ways to add value to our team members.

INITIATIVE

Leaders must show initiative by always looking for opportunities and being ready to take action. What qualities do leaders possess that enable them to make things happen? Here are four:

 They know what they want.

They push themselves to act.

They take more risks.

They make more mistakes.

LISTENING

Peter Drucker, the father of American management, estimated that 60 percent of all management problems are the result of faulty communications. And the overwhelming majority of communication problems come from poor listening.

A lot of voices are clamouring out there for the leaders attention. There are two purposes for listening: to connect with people and to learn.

Great leaders are also great listeners. They pay close attention to people and what they have to say. They listen not only for words, but also for feelings, meanings and undercurrents.

The leaders that INTJ wants will spend time listening to HPC system administrators, to our clients, and to our management team.  They will find common ground with people. Get to know whom they are and will seek common ground to build a connection with them.

PASSION

What makes it possible for people who might seem ordinary to achieve great things? The answer is passion. Nothing can take the place of passion in a leader’s life.

Passion is the first step to achievement. A leaders desire determines his or her destiny. Think of great leaders and you will be struck by their passion: Gandhi for human rights, Winston Churchill for freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. for equality, Bill Gates for technology. Anyone who lives beyond an ordinary life has great desire.

Passion increases willpower. It is the fuel for the will. If you want anything badly enough, you can find the willpower to achieve it. If you follow your passion –– instead of others’ perceptions –– you can’t help becoming a more dedicated, productive person.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE

A positive attitude is essential to effective leadership. It not only determines the level of contentment of the leader, but it also has an impact on how others interact with that leader.

The leaders attitude is a choice. No matter what happened to them yesterday, the leaders attitude is their choice today. Attitude determines actions.

PROBLEM SOLVING

No matter what field a leader is in, he or she will face problems. They are inevitable for three reasons.

First, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity.

Second, we interact with people.

And third, we cannot control all the situations we face.

Leaders with good problem-solving ability anticipate problems, accept the truth and handle one thing at a time. They see the big picture and they don’t give up a major goal when they’re down.

RELATIONSHIPS

The ability to work with people and develop relationships is absolutely indispensable to effective leadership. People truly do want to go along with people they get along with. And while someone can have people skills and not be a good leader, he or she cannot be a good leader without people skills. Never underestimate the power of relationships on people’s lives.

RESPONSIBILITY

Good leaders never embrace a victim mentality. They recognize that who and where they are remain their responsibility –– not that of their parents, their spouses, their children, the government, their bosses or their coworkers. They face whatever life throws at them and give it their best, knowing that they will get an opportunity to lead the team only if they’ve proved that they can carry the ball.

People who embrace responsibility get the job done. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to complete the work needed by the organization.

SECURITY

Insecure leaders are dangerous — to themselves, their followers and the organizations they lead — because a leadership position amplifies personal flaws. Insecure leaders have several common traits: They don’t provide security for others, they take more from people than they give, they continually limit their best people and they continually limit the organization.

In contrast, secure leaders are able to believe in others because they believe in themselves. They aren’t arrogant; they know their own strengths and weaknesses; and they respect themselves. When their people perform well, they don’t feel threatened. They go out of their way to bring the best people together and then build them up so that they will perform at the highest level. And when a secure leader’s team succeeds, it brings him or her great joy.

I am looking for HPC leaders who know themselves and are self aware.  People who will give away the credit - acknowledging others contributions, people who will lift team morale and improve the INTJ corporation.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

No one achieves and sustains success without self-discipline. It positions a leader to go to the highest level and is key to leadership that lasts. The essence of self-discipline is concentrating on priorities.

Self-discipline can’t be a one-time event. It has to become a lifestyle. To develop a lifestyle of discipline, one of the leaders tasks must be to challenge and eliminate any tendency to make excuses.

SERVANTHOOD

Servanthood is not about position or skill. It’s about attitude. We have all met people in service positions who have poor attitudes toward servanthood: the rude worker at the government agency, the waiter who can’t be bothered with taking your order, the store clerk who talks on the phone with a friend instead of helping us.

Just as we can sense when a worker doesn’t want to help people, we can just as easily detect whether a leader has a servant’s heart. And the truth is that the best leaders desire to serve others, not themselves. The first mark of servanthood is the ability to put others ahead of yourself and your personal desires.

TEACHABILITY

Leaders face the danger of contentment with the status quo. After all, if a leader already possesses influence and has achieved a level of respect, why should he or she keep growing? The answer is –– the leaders growth determines who they are, and who they are determines who they attract, and who they attract determines the success of the organization.

If the leader wants to grow the team, they have to remain teachable. Some people mistakenly believe that if they can accomplish a particular goal, they no longer have to grow. It can happen with almost anything: earning a degree, reaching a desired position, receiving a particular award or achieving a financial goal. But effective leaders cannot afford to think that way. The day they stop growing is the day they forfeit their potential — and the potential of the team.  I'm looking for people who will keep growing as leaders.

VISION

Vision is everything for a leader. It is utterly indispensable. Why? Because vision leads the leader. It paints the target. It sparks and fuels the fire within, and draws him or her forward. It is also the fire lighter for others who follow that leader.

Show me a leader without vision and I’ll show you someone who isn’t going anywhere. At best, he or she is traveling in circles.

We need leaders who catalyse commitment to clear and compelling visions and then get the hell out of our way so that the HPC system administrators can do their jobs.

It is my hope that you will reflect on the leadership qualities I have discussed here today.

Once again - I would like to express my appreciation to you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to hear me talk today on the The 21 indispensible qualities of a leader.