Mark Sanborn has a great blog and addresses leadership issues in many of his posts. One of his posts that really caught me attention is “Lessons Leaders Need to Know” In the post Mark lists his leadership lessons, some of which are:
- The responsibility and service of leadership always outweigh the recognition and status.
- Anyone can lead but not everyone should lead. If you don’t have your heart in it, you’ll be mediocre at best.
- Leadership doesn’t make a difference; leadership makes the difference, personally and organizationally.
- Anything the leader does that benefits only him- or herself was done out of ambition; leadership done right benefits others as well.
- Consensus building is harder but far more powerful than control.
- Your impact will rarely be bigger than your vision.
- People draw big conclusions for little gestures and interactions.
- As John Maxwell says, “It shouldn’t be lonely at the top.” If it is, you’ve done something wrong getting to the top.
- I learned from the autobiography of John Ashcroft that as a leader more people will befriend you than be your friend. Understanding the difference is critical.
- The best way to gain cooperation is by asking, “How can I help you?”
- Leaders make time for what’s important.
We can all learn from these lessons. The fact that “your impact will rarely be bigger that your vision” really hit me between the ears! I found myself asking myself if my vision is big enough? How about yours?
Technorati Tags: Vision, Leadership, Lessons, Impact, Management, Example, Business
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Not a vision, but my ongoing goal is to become the best leader possible. This means that it is always place for growth, education, knowledge, skill and whatever it takes to make me the best leader possible. And as I leader I feel that I am obligated to become as good as possible to ensure that my employees will benefit from my leadership.
I am also starting to think why not, when it comes to leadership. This person is a great leader, why not me? I wish there where some kind of conference about happiness at work in town, why not me, why should I not make it happen? So when I startet to think why not me, I have gotten much further. But it is demanding, as I suddenly must do the same things as other people would have done if they did it instead of me. So a co-worker and me are currently planing a large conference next fall. And we got some great names to attend as well.
Leadership is about making other people great, it is about being the best you can, so in turn you can help others become even better. Leadership is about doing and thinking why not.
I really identify with the “Consensus building is harder but far more powerful than control”. It is so true. John Maxwell points this out and so do many other leaders.
Think about it. You cannot really “demand” that your people work past their weekly number of hours, or come in on a day that they weren’t scheduled, or do something that isn’t exactly in their job description. However, if you fully get people on board, build a consensus, build trust between you and them, and then “ask” that they do these things then what will normall happen? They’ll do them!
Building consensus allows for you, as a leader, to exercise a very decentralized leadership style that will encourage initiative. That will not only unleash the hidden potential in your employees, but it will also allow you to focus on more important things. This option is not available if you focus on control though since you’ll be spending all of your time doing writeups!
Thanks for bringing this to light,
Kyle