Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
Every now and then it is important to take a personal inventory of your skills and abilities. I don’t mean an end of the year surface-level, quick, “hey, I’m great” type of thing. I’m talking about an honest, candid evaluation of yourself as a leader. A deep look inside.
Every time I have done this over the years, I also ask myself, “What skills do I need to develop to be more successful in the future?” There are four must have leadership skills on my list this year. They are:
People aren’t born into leadership positions. We usually start in the trenches, as the doers. The bricklayers. The people touching all the parts, from the inside out. We earn the right to lead the projects and the vision by doing the work itself, and doing it well. But therein usually lies the rub.
Because the hardest part of learning to lead well is letting go of the execution, the very thing that earned us our spot at the head of the team, and entrusting others with the building and construction.
The old saying of “if you want something done right, do it yourself” just doesn’t play at scale. That’s not how great ideas come to fruition, and it’s not how great businesses are built.
As I’ve learned to lead rather than do (and that’s a constant process), a few key concepts have helped me a great deal to stay on track, and perhaps they’ll help you too, or someone you know emerging into a leadership role.
Navigation:
* Build consensus around shared goals and direction.
* Present the what – the shared vision or goals – but not necessarily the how.
* Communicate expectations clearly and often.
* Avoid dictating the plans yourself, but rather help refine the roadmaps that others have built and presented.
Advocacy:
* Champion and enable others’ ideas instead of always handing others ideas to execute.
* Allow your teams sometimes to fail in their search for the approach that works, and to help them find the lessons in those failures.
* Protect nascent ideas and allow them time to incubate without immediate interference from bureaucracy and naysayers.
* Encourage respectful discourse and sharing of opinions and viewpoints, including opposing ones.
* Recognize success openly, sincerely, and often.
Perspective:
* Provide context, history, and organizational intelligence to empower your teams with information upon which to build their plans.
* Look past today’s projects to envision what tomorrow might look like and how you can guide toward it.
* Present alternative views or looks at stubborn problems.
* Consistently evaluate team dynamics and capabilities, and make the tough people decisions to ensure you’ve got the right people in the right roles.
Trust:
* Provide direct lines of communication with each team member, and be available.
* Keep confidences, period.
* Hire capable, smart people, and be willing to get out of their way.
* Be responsible and accountable for your decisions and their results, and avoid scapegoating and blame.
* Share the credit, and the spotlight.
Learning to be a leader can be challenging when you’ve built a career on doing the work. Old habits die hard. It’s sometimes hard to believe that anyone can do what you do and do it as well, or better. But if you’ve got designs on building something bigger than you, you’re going to need to build and empower a team around you. It’s just not possible to do it alone.
So what would you add to my list? How would you help new and emerging leaders get comfortable with their roles? I’m looking forward to your comments. Fire away.
When it comes to communication that is critical to the future, it’s easy to let the negatives we know (and probably understand very well) completely determine the framework of an important message.
Case in point — when discussing dating with my teenage daughter, it’s difficult for me not to speak completely out of personal experience, framing the message in the context of the “devil” I know – ”I know exactly what boys are up to because I was one!” Few would dispute that my perspective is rooted in fact; there is no shortage of data points to support the message. But the problem (apart from the fact that my target audience has no interest in hearing this message) is that this one-dimensional message does little to help my daughter develop a perspective that helps her move into the future.
What does this have to do with our communication as leaders? Simply this: without exception, when communication is couched and “toned” only by data points of the past — or for that matter, the present — it will lack dimension, skew perspective, and seed a faulty response.
Absent a perspective that allows for (and prompts) vision, the communication of leaders runs the risk of doing little more than contributing to the current noise of the marketplace. If the data is less than stellar (consider recent communication concerning the U.S. economic strains), the chances are great that the devils we know have far too much influence on the message — even when the message is future-looking.
Consider this: had the framework for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or poetic Second Inaugural referenced only the reality of the moment, his speeches would simply have decried the nation’s condition, and mourned those yet to die. Instead, Lincoln used the past only to raise a new vision.
Had Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the throng speaking only out of experience, the “I have a dream” refrain would never have passed his lips.
And in the wake of the USSR having won the race to orbit the earth, JFK dared to stir the US with an unthinkable vision — to put a man on the moon.
What Lincoln, King and Kennedy did was seed a vision. Some might suggest that known data points and vision represent opposite perspectives — that the former is grounded in fact and the latter is right-side-of-the-brain creativity at its best . . . spin at worst. Yet, modern history’s pivotal moments are often marked by the communication of a leader who, unprepared for the past to define the future, was able to articulate a new view of the horizon.
Pivotal moments — whether in commerce, social enterprise or political endeavors – come when leaders understand that most of us are ready to be done with the devils we have known. We simply need someone to help us with the vision of what might be.
Have a Vision? Lead on.