Category Archives: ABC’s of Leadership

Feb 07 2013
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ABC's of Leadership

Leadership is: Guiding

Do you guide or drive?

First, let me define “driving” for this post. There are many types of “drives” we could talk about, for example it is good to push and drive a team towards excellence but that’s not the type of drive I’m talking about. For this post drive should be seen as: forcefully pushing, with out much fore or after thought for the person or group.

The longer I lead the more clearly the differences between guiding and driving become. As a teacher it is extremely easy to be a driving force, shoving information down the throats of students. Recently I’ve tried to guide my students not to learn more information, but rather to be better students. What they learn in 7th and 8th grade will be forgotten, trust me, I had to re-learn (or learn for the first time) all the information I have to cover. But if they can learn how to be a good student and develop those habits now, they will stick with them for the rest of their lives.  A guiding leader is focused on their team members and culture because they know a healthy team produces healthy results.

7 Differences Between Guiding & Driving

Guiding leaders mirror the actions and attitudes they desire to see from their team members.
Driving leaders demand their subordinates to act how they want them to act regardless of how they themselves act.

Guiding leaders see ahead to the possible dangers their team might face.
Driving leaders look ahead and only see the possible dangers they might face.

Guiding leaders are proactive.
Driving leaders are reactive.

Guiding leaders are servant leaders.
Driving leaders are “serve me” leaders.

Guiding leaders know their team members.
Driving leaders expect their subordinates to know them.

Guiding leaders are constantly seeking information.
Driving leaders believe they have all the information.

Guiding leaders lead toward intrinsic values.
Driving leaders manipulate with extrinsic consequences.

What would you add?

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Feb 06 2013
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ABC's of Leadership

Leadership is: Following

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?

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Feb 05 2013
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ABC's of Leadership

Leadership is: Exercise

Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes. – Robert Hutchens 

Most often when leadership is discussed, exercise is not among the qualities associated with it. However, both PHYSICAL and MENTAL exercise are essential to leading well.

Rather than go through what you can do for mental and physical exercise, or what the benefits would be, I’m going to give you four actions that will translate to success with any exercise you take on. You might think this is cheating but with a 350 word limit I call it being creative.

First, you need a goal: What are you’re hoping to achieve? Goals can change as you accomplish them or realize they aren’t right for you at the moment. However, if there is no goal, you will not be able to structure for the right activities.

Secondly, you need a plan! What are you’re going to do? If you’re not sure what you’re going to do your work outs will be less than adequate. It is most likely that you will stop too soon, or waste the time you have to work out trying to think of what you’re going to do next. This is true also for mental exercise.

Thirdly, you need a way to track progress! Goals and plans are great, but we must have a way to track our progress, to make sure we’re on the right path to our goals. Andy Stanley says it this way, “Our actions, not our desires, get us to where we want to be.” (Just for effect, read that last quote again)

Lastly, you need a break! This break isn’t to stop and do nothing. This break is so that you can evaluate what you’ve done, why you’ve done it, and what would be good to do differently. How often you do this is dependent on you and your goals. If you know you tend to get side tracked you will want to stop and evaluate more often to check yourself and renew your sense of purpose.

Just so that you can’t say I didn’t give you any direction for exercises, two great sources to help guide your mental and physical exercise are:

The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry

&

www.womenshealthmag.com or www.menshealth.com (note: not all subject matter suitable for minors)

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Feb 04 2013
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ABC's of Leadership

Leadership is: Discernment

Dictionary.com defines discernas: (1) to perceive by the sight or some other sense or by the intellect; see, recognize, or apprehend: They discerned a sailon the horizon. (2) to distinguish mentally; recognize as distinct or different;discriminate: He is incapable of discerning right from wrong.

Which way do I go?

The more you know ahead of time better prepared you are to make a decision.

Personally, I would define discernment as one’s ability judge correctly.

We all have the ability to discern. The question we need to ask is how good is my ability to discern (how often am I correct)? The quality of our discernment is based on our areas of strengths and weaknesses. I am more likely to have better discernment in my areas of strength. This is because it comes more naturally for me, these could be considered as my “natural talents.”

Side note: I used to tell people not to focus on their weaknesses because it will take more time and effort to attain success. However, I’m revising this stance. If you want to excel in an area that is not your strength or “bent” go for it! Just know that it will take hard, hard work to experience success.

However, natural talent is not enough to produce good discernment. If I want to increase my discernment, in any area, I must put more effort and work into that area. The more familiar I become with a principle, problem, idea, etc., the better my discernment can be. 

Discernment is valuable because it allows me to make good decisions with less information in the moment. If I wait until I have 100% of the information before I make a decision it is possible that I have made my choice too late. As  a leader I must constantly make choices. If I am to be a good leader, I must make the right choices. It is said victory loves preparation. I consider preparation the process of increasing my discernment.

In what areas is discernment natural for you?

In what area do you want better discernment, what is one specific thing you can do to increase your discernment in that area?

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Feb 03 2013
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ABC's of Leadership

Leadership is: Communication

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” – Robert McCloskey

At the risk of sounding cliche’, communication is key really important! This seemingly simple aspect of leadership has ruined more relationships and lost more influence than any other action — I don’t know that for a fact, but it makes communication seem really important doesn’t it?

The truth is communication makes or breaks leadership. All too often we know what we want to say, in fact, we’ve thought long and hard about whatever it is we KNOW we NEED to communicate. So we say it. If we were a good communicator we would have developed some healthy communicating habits before we just “said it.”

The first thing we would have done is…

1. Questioned if it really needed to be said: In our world of say anything to anyone quickly, our filters have yet to catch up. Not everything needs to be said. Sometimes, the loudest thing you can communicate is your silence.

the next thing we would have done if we were good communicators is…

2. Considered who we were talking to: If what you have to say is important enough to say, then it is important enough to say it in a way they will hear it. Always consider your audience. Depending on the course or the dorm, I’m not going to talk to a middle school group the same way I’m going to talk to a college group.

and finally we would have…

3. Figured out what we really wanted to say:  The reason we figure out what we really want to say is because that single thing is what we’re going to say. Don’t add more than is needed to get what you need to say said, end of story.

Saying is just one part of communication but for the sake of my 350 word limit let me just say this: LISTEN. Part 2 of communication is listening, not staying quite — it’s listening. Hear what the other person is saying, and not saying!

What is your biggest struggle with communication: Saying or Listening?

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