What leads the leader?
“The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just.” – Thomas Jefferson
Leaders must be followers. However, the question begs to be asked, “If they are leading, who or what are they following?”
For most leaders, dreaming the dream and coming up with the vision is the best part. The problem lies in keeping with the dream and the vision once it’s out of the incubator stage.
When I took the Strengths Finder 2.0 “strategy” came up as my main strength. As I read through the action plan for someone with my strength, I came across this suggestion, “Partner with someone with strong Activator talents. With this person’s need for action and your need for anticipation, you can forge a powerful partnership.”
That’s a really awesome way of saying you need to hook up with a doer. This doesn’t hurt my feelings at all, because the reality is I’m not a big fan of the constantly doing. I want to dream, create a vision, start it, and then walk away to dream something else.
The problem with this is that it can really frustrate the doers on my team. If I bounce from dream to dream to dream, my leadership ADD is going to wear my other team members out; they will quit, leave visions incomplete, or produce low quality finished products.
In order to save my team, and for the final product to be as close to the vision as possible, I must have a plan! Once I have that plan, I must follow it!
This all assumes that the plan matches up to my values and my goals. If it doesn’t I need to scrap the dream, vision, and plan. As I mentioned in Leadership is: Exercise, “your actions, not your desires, get you to where you want to be.” I must always be asking, does this get me closer to my goal? Does this match up with my core values? If I’m not constantly checking where I am in relation to these, I am bound to get off track.
Do you find it hard to follow through the plan you’ve made?
Are those around you worn out from your leadership ADD?
Have you taken on too many task at once rather than systematically accomplishing what is needed?
Square One Leadership 