Leadership

Last week, I shared five of my top 10 leadership activities that great leaders perform. This week is the other five. Please remember that there is no priority or order; these all are critical and impactful when applied. GREAT LEADERS ask more questions. Staying curious is important in building relationships and discovering more about the people you lead. Oftentimes times, there is a tendency for the leader to talk more than listen. Open-ended questions can unlock many doors in the process of developing people. The relationship is strengthened when we help people discover solutions and overcome barriers through probing questions. Great leaders are not the boss or the pal. GREAT LEADERS  are not the boss or their pals. We must [...]

There are many things great leaders do that differentiate them. I have identified 10. Over the next two weeks, I will share them with you. Great leaders care but never compromise.  As leaders, we must care about our people. We must continually seek to understand them. We must point them in the right direction to the resources that will help them. There is a fine line between care and candor. There are times when we need to call them out, hold them to a higher standard, and never compromise our culture and values. Great leaders inspire, not try to motivate.  I have learned I can’t motivate someone to perform. I thought I could. Motivation comes from within. Our role as [...]

Tongue-in-cheek here. Without effective delegation, you can’t scale your enterprise, department, or organization. Letting go and trusting others to do things well is one of the more challenging aspects of being a leader of a growing organization. I find it interesting that most MBA programs don’t offer courses or even lectures on how to delegate. Yet, it is one of the most critical skills a leader must develop. Care must be taken that we don’t confuse delegation with abdication. Abdication is blindly handing over a task to someone with no formal feedback mechanism. Over the years I have made my share of mistakes when it comes to delegation. In many instances, I “dumped the work unto someone” and gave little consideration [...]

Here is the reality, folks: your leadership is an inside job. Your leadership effectiveness begins with what is inside you. Who you are and who you are becoming charts the course of your influence –your leadership. It has been said that "the first person you lead is you." Albert Schweitzer spoke on the meaning of leadership; he said, “Example isn’t the main thing in leadership, it is the only thing.” Well, that may sound a little out there. I believe Schweitzer was saying that all your words as a leader mean nothing if your life doesn’t back it up. We must lead the pack if we expect our people to develop and grow. We must be the locomotive pulling the train [...]