Leadership

You have to know where you’re going. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived.

Without a purpose, there is no way to measure your success.  This applies to everything you set out to accomplish. You must have a firm picture of the What, When, and the How:

  • A project at work – What is the end goal? When is it scheduled to be completed? How many resources do you need?
  • A vacation trip – What is the destination? When is your vacation time? How are you going to get there?
  • Your dream house – What neighborhood do you want to live in?  When do you want to move? How will you pay for it?
  • Your goal to lose weight – What is your desired weight? When do you want to reach your desired weight? How will you achieve your goal (stop what, or start what, or both)?

Dwight Eisenhower said, ‘We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.’

Can you share some examples of goals that you have achieved by knowing the What, When, and How?

To be the best, Invest more than the rest. Are you investing in yourself? Are you continuously growing in knowledge and wisdom?

As a leader, you owe it to your team to run the race just as fast, if not faster, than they are.

I attend conferences all over the country to hear from the best.  I recently attended a conference in San Diego where I had the pleasure of hearing great leaders fill me with their wisdom. Leaders like Les Brown, Sharon Lechter, Gene Landrum, Frank Shankwitz, and others, all spoke from their experience.

We were in a packed room sitting close enough that I could see each of these special teachers in their seats before and after their time to speak.  As I was busy taking pages of notes, I could see out of the corner of my eye that each of them was taking just as many notes as I was.  At one point Gene Landrum asked the people at my table if anyone had more paper so he could continue taking notes.

Along with the knowledge I gained from each leader, I learned a life lesson that day:

No matter how much you know; there is always room to grow!

Denis Waitley said, “All of the top achievers are life-long learners…Looking for new skills, insights, and ideas.  If they’re not learning, they’re not growing…not moving toward excellence.”

As a leader, you owe it to your team to run the race just as fast, if not faster, than they are.

What have you done today to invest in yourself?  What will you do tomorrow, the next day…How are you continuously growing in knowledge and wisdom?

Do you want to have the best team working for you? Good leaders look at people’s strength and make use of it, while great leaders look at people’s potential and make the best of it.

A leader’s job is to see where others can go and open the right doors for them to pass through.  A leader’s job is to focus on what is there – strengths – and remove the focus from weakness – that which is not there.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”

Michelangelo said, “A great statue already exists inside a block of stone. The sculptor’s role is to uncover it.”

If you want the best team, you have to intentionally focus your leadership efforts on unleashing the greatness inside of everyone you influence.

Do you remember who recognized greatness in you?  Who told you that you could be anything you set your mind to? Was it a parent, grandparent, teacher, coach, pastor, boss?

To Everything Turn, Turn, Turn

 

In 1965 the American folk rock band The Byrds recorded the song Turn! Turn! Turn!  The message of the song is, to quote from one line, “There is a time to every purpose under heaven.”

We can all think of examples of this timing:

  • The seasons always come in order – spring, summer, fall, and winter
  • The phases of the moon always move in the same order from new moon to new moon.
  • The farmer has to till before planting and water before harvesting.

I have found that leadership also has a time to its purpose.  I call it the Three Phases of Leadership Development:

  • Relationship – Through the forming of a trusting relationship, the team will follow as the leader shows them how to be successful.
  • Understanding – By modeling after the leader’s example, the team will understand how to achieve their own success.
  • Knowledge – Through mentoring, the team will gain the knowledge of when to apply what is understood.

For your leadership journey to be successful, follow the Three Phases of Leadership Development with every new team.

Whenever Possible Follow the Road More Traveled

“Keep on the outlook for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.”

I was surprised when I first read this quote from Thomas Edison. Yes the same Thomas Edison that is the holder of 1,093 United States patents and the inventor of the phonograph and the incandescent light bulb among many other inventions.  Leaders are many times told to blaze their own trail; which is sometimes the right answer, but sometimes not.

In my many years of business I discovered that most people are genuinely convinced that their situations are so unique and so difficult that no one has faced quite the same circumstances before, let alone found a way to solve them.  In some way I think it is a bit of pride in the human condition that makes people want a difficult solution for their difficult problems.  But it doesn’t need to be difficult.  Often, eighty percent of a problem has been solved before, the other twenty percent is taking the initiative to accept the solution given to you and implement it.

Sometimes, we don’t need a better mousetrap; we just need to understand how to use the ones that are already out there.

Listen While You Work

“Leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less.”  I learned this from John Maxwell and I teach it to everyone I mentor.  The beginning of influence is trust, and trying to influence another person without first eliciting trust is as futile as trying to boil water outside of a kettle.  Trust, like the kettle, is the vessel in which all things work together to generate powerful action.

Developing trust comes from understanding one another.  Ralph Nichols, an expert in the field of listening, says, “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

If you think about the command and control leadership style, you can picture the leader in front of a room filled with their employees and a microphone in their hand. They talk from the beginning of the meeting to the end of the meeting; telling their team what they need to hear.  That style of leader doesn’t understand their team, won’t develop trust with their team, and can’t influence their team.

Kevin Turner, the COO of Microsoft and former CEO of Sam’s Club once described the secret to Sam Walton’s success.  He said, “Walton didn’t have an open door policy; he had an open ear policy.”

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