The more time I spend with military and national security leaders, the more I’m convinced of the magnitude of a certain leadership quality: courage. That might not surprise you; everyone knows military service members need courage to put their lives on the line every day. There’s no debating that, but the courage I’m talking about applies to all leaders everywhere, whether your organization is made up of hundreds of thousands of people, or just a handful. Let me explain.
The humble leader is in vogue. Jim Collin’s masterpiece Good to Great made that clear with his distinction of “Level 5 Leadership,” as has a resurgence in servant leadership interest.
But if you are a naturally non-assuming person, you can’t use the guise of “humility” to keep from putting your best foot forward.
Have you ever stopped to think about how your perceptions of any given institution are formed? By institution, I mean anything from an organization, group, idea, person, legislation, or even religion. Most of us are quick to form our opinions, but how informed are those opinions?
We all know intuitively that good leaders ought to delegate. So when push comes to shove, why do we have such a hard time with it, especially if we are relatively new at being in charge? I want to share with you five barriers that keep us from delegating successfully and then some strategies to become more effective. But I’m warning you upfront, they aren’t pretty.
Everyone is a leader. I really believe that. That may be a new idea for you if you’ve always thought you needed a title or a position, or be a charismatic person in order to be a leader. But let me give you an example by way of posing a question. Is there anything you could do today that would make things worse for the people around you? If you can do something to make things worse, doesn’t it follow that you can also do something to make things better? The bottom line is that leadership is influence.
But here’s the catch: most people don’t think about leadership until they experience a leadership challenge. (Click to Tweet)
