Nowadays one can often hear about leadership skills, professional development, and personal skills. All these traits are required while applying for a job. The heads of the company demand the workers of their company to owe such skills to transform the company from “good to great”.

Leadership development is seen as a deliberate attempt to provide leaders and emerging leaders with a chance to grow, change and learn. It pursuits the aim to produce the person with attainments to work effectively within the company.

Leadership development is not possible without already possessed amount of skills. The following personal skills are usually required:

· Effective communication, i.e. a person needs to be able to listen carefully and fulfill the instructions effectively. A worker should explain everything logically and clearly.

· Technical literacy and computer literacy. They are inevitable traits of the worker in the modern market. Current working place cannot be imagined without computerization and other devices.

· Problem solving and creativity. Fewer problems lead to more effective working process. Everyone does what he/she is expected in order to avoid critical situations that may provoke some troubles. New techniques and methods are not always accepted with a great success, but innovations and modernization move the working process.

· Interpersonal abilities. Whether the worker wants or not but he/she is considered as a piece of the great organism – company. Relations among people play an important role for company profit. Teamwork is encouraged as well as the ability to communicate with customers.

· Planning and organizing mean that a person is required to set priorities and successfully accomplish them.

As a result of everything mentioned above, there should always be a professional development. The person must improve from day to day.

Nowadays many books have been written on the topic of personal improvement as well as perfection of companies and organizations. One of such books is “Good to Great” by Jim Collins.

From the very beginning of the book the author states that “good is the enemy of great”. Very often we face the situation when there is no improvement. Leaders usually either do not have the intention to become perfect or do not know about such opportunity for their company. Deals go well, so there is no reason to make them great. If the affairs in the organization fail, the working process is rather to be overviewed. Good should be considered as terrible because of the one reason: it is not great.

In the chapter “Level 5 Leadership” Collins acquaint us with people who work for the company which made the leap from good to great. According to the book, the leader should possess ambitions, but they must be concentrated on the success of the company, but not for “one’s own riches and personal renown. The leader who pays too much attention to “personal greatness” usually fails. His/her attempts must be directed at the profit of the company, and as a result, some personal desires and wishes can be fulfilled. Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; and so forth. They do not consider themselves as heroes. They are rather modest and do not demand to be rewarded for the work. These leaders are ordinary people who show extraordinary results. It is very important to mention that leadership does not mean being reserved and modest, but being ready to work for the company’s prosperity.

In the next chapter, it is overviewed how important it is to have a strong team. The author uses simple example with the bus driver. The head of the company should focus on every person working in the organization, especially on his/her character, work, readiness for dedication, practical skill.

A very important part of hiring a worker and later of the working process is the discipline. When you have disciplined people, you do not need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you do not need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you do not need excessive controls.

Finally, the book is full of diversity of simple examples. It is very interesting and educative. Personally, there can be distinguished two important changes after reading this book. The first one is to pay more attention to the discipline and self-organization, i.e. strictly follow time management and fulfill set task according to their importance. The second way of personal changes is to overview personal skills and achievement. Maybe there is something that is considered to be good, but can become great.

About the author: Joseph Miller is a master in English philology and literature at California University. Joseph is currently working as one of the best writers at the Essays-Writers.com He also studies feminine psychology.