Leading with NLP

Guides and Rules of the Road 117

Loser’s Strategy –

Turning Mistakes into Disasters

A bad experience is:

the result of what they did. They are to blame.

something that shows they are an incompetent person.

something that will affect many areas of their life.

the latest in a catalogue of disasters.

A good experience is:

proof that they were lucky this time.

the result of what they did, not who they are.

an isolated incident.

balancing task and relationship

The Journal of European Qualitypublished an interesting series
of articles about European business leaders in 1997.^1 They
identified eight leadership styles by asking the employees (re-
garded as the leader’s ‘internal customers’) what qualities
they thought were most important in business leaders and
built up a profile of an excellent leader in European business.
Eight leadership styles emerged as the most important: the
team builder, the captain, the strategic, the creative, the
leader focused on task, the involved, the specialist and the im-
pulsive. The survey showed that the most important style was
the strategic. Strategic skills were most valued – setting a long-
term direction, setting a competitive strategy and guiding the
business through the market opportunities. Second was the
task-focused leader, then, close together in third place, the
captain (leading from the front by commanding the respect
and trust of the employees) and the team builder.
Setting the vision is the first part of the leader’s work. The
second part is setting the strategy, goals and tasks that are
necessary for the vision to be achieved. The third part is to
make sure these tasks are done, otherwise no one reaches
the goals or realizes the vision.