Bill Nye

How to be a Likeable Leader

Likeable - Dale Carnegie making friendsThey key to being a likable leader is to achieve both the “What” and the “How.”

What – People will like you for achieving success for the company (or team) and the individual.

How – People will like you for setting the strategy for the company to succeed and providing opportunities for the individual to succeed.

What does a likeable leader do?

Success for the company (or team).  How do you define success for your company or team? It’s about the results:  Sales, Profits, Stabilization of the Community, Growth, Returns, Market-Share…There are many ways to say it, but in the end success for a company is measured by achieving the results that the industry demands.  It’s hard to be a likeable leader if you can’t provide a source of income for the people in your company or on your team.

“Effective leadership is not just about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results.” – Peter Drucker

Success for the individual.  What about the people that make up any company.  Their company or team is doing well, is that enough?  The answer is no.  By achieving success for the company or team you have provided stability and also a sense of pride in the group.  But people are more than just members of a team, they are individuals and individuals have their own dreams and desires.  Do you know what the individual dreams and desires are of the people in your company or on your team?  If not, how can you hope to help them fulfill that need?

“All successful people are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.” – Brian Tracy

How does a likeable leader do it?

Strategy for the company (or team).  The leaders job is to decide on the goals that once achieved will bring success.  And just as important, the leader picks the path that the whole company or team will take to achieve its goals (including where not to go). No company or team can hope to achieve long term success without a winning strategy. 

“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different…The company without a strategy is willing to try anything.” – Michael Porter

Opportunity for the individual.  Leaders must always keep in mind that a company or team is made up of individuals.  Your goals and plans may be strategic and energizing, but Monday morning comes and each person in your in your company or on your team has to know what they can do to help achieve the goals while bettering themselves. A company’s or team’s success is the sum of the individual’s successes.

“All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” – Albert Einstein

Finally, here are a few daily exercises for the likeable leader:

Lighten up your approach

“If you look back on all the teachers that you liked, I am sure you will find they were very entertaining.” – Bill Nye

Look up and see others

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”  – Dale Carnegie

Lift up other people

 “Basically, likeability comes down to creating positive emotional experiences in others. When you make others feel good, they tend to gravitate to you.”  – Tim Sanders

 

Leaders with humility succeed

newton standign on the shouldersLeaders with humility will succeed in their career.  Humility allows people to listen to, and learn from others who have been where the are going.  Humility doesn’t mean you doubt your ability, it means you respect the ability of others.

C.S. Lewis once said, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

Here are three reasons why leaders with humility succeed:

Leaders with humility succeed  because they are open to learning from others.  Great leaders realize that there is very little they do well that they didn’t learn from someone else.  Learning from others is a strength of great leaders.  Will Rogers once said, “A man learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.”

Leaders with humility succeed because they gain knowledge and wisdom from every encounter.  Each person can learn and grow if they will determine to learn from the success of others. Bill Nye said, “Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.”

John Maxwell, the great leadership expert, uses a set of seven questions when he talks to successful leaders:

  1. What are the great lessons you have learned?
  2. How has failure shaped your life?
  3. What are your strengths?
  4. What is your passion?
  5. Who do you know that I should know?
  6. What have you read that I should read?
  7. What have you done that I should do?

Leaders with humility succeed because they surround themselves with people who know more than they do.  Great leaders know that they can’t know everything.  If you want to be the best, then hire the best in every area. Leaders with humility don’t need to be the smartest person in the room; in fact it is a requirement that they are not.

Malcolm Forbes, former publisher of Forbes said, “Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he’s hired to do.”

Leo Iacocca, Chrysler’s former CEO said,  ”I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.”

 

 

 

 

 

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