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how well you lead determines how well you succeed. Leadership is the lid to your potential.
I believe that personal success is within the reach of just about everyone. But I also believe that the better you can lead, the greater you can succeed. The higher you want to climb and the greater success you want to achieve, the more you will need leadership. The greater the impact you want to make, the greater your influence needs to be. Whatever you will accomplish is restricted by your ability to lead others.
Leadership has a multiplying effect.
TO CHANGE THE DIRECTION OF THE ORGANIZATION, CHANGE THE LEADER Leadership ability is always the lid on personal and organizational success. If a person’s leadership is strong, the team’s or organization’s lid is high. But if it’s not, then it’s limited. That’s why in times of trouble, organizations naturally look for new leadership.
If you don’t have influence, you will never be able to lead others.
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from developing influence, and that cannot be mandated. It must be earned. The 5 Levels of Leadership is a road map for that process. The only thing a title can buy is time—either to increase your level of influence with others or to undermine it.
Social influence doesn’t become leadership influence until the people following change their behavior and take action as a result of the interaction with the influencer.
leadership is about influencing people to follow, while management focuses on maintaining systems and processes.
CEO Lee Iacocca wryly commented, “Sometimes even the best manager is like the little boy with the big dog, waiting to see where the dog wants to go so that he can take him there.”
The best way to test whether a person can lead rather than just manage is to ask him to create positive change. Managers can maintain direction, but often they can’t change it. Systems and processes can do only so mu...
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To be a leader, a person has to not only be out front, but also have people intentionally coming behind him, following his lead, and acting on his vision. Being a trendsetter is not the same as being a leader.
“It’s not the position that makes the leader; it’s the leader that makes the position.” —STANLEY HUFFTY
Don’t listen to the claims of the person professing to be the leader. Don’t examine credentials. Don’t check titles. Check for influence. The proof of leadership is found in the followers.
True leadership always begins with the inner person.
Influence begins with who you are.
Build enough of the right kinds of relationships with the right people, and you can become the real leader in an organization.
Information is vital to a leader. You need a grasp of the facts, an understanding of dynamic factors and timing, and a vision for the future. Knowledge alone won’t make someone a leader, but without knowledge, no one can become one.
Leadership requires more than just a command of data. It demands an ability to deal with numerous intangibles. In fact, that is often one of the main differences between managers and leaders. Leaders seek to recognize and influence intangibles such as energy, morale, timing, and momentum.
The greater the challenges you’ve faced as a leader in the past, the more likely followers are to give you a chance to lead in the present. Experience doesn’t guarantee credibility, but it encourages people to give you a chance to prove that you are capable.
Nothing speaks to followers like a good track record.
“The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate.” —HARRY A. OVERSTREET
“He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.”
Becoming a leader is a lot like investing successfully in the stock market. If your hope is to make a fortune in a day, you’re not likely to be successful. There are no successful “day traders” in leadership development. What matters most is what you do day by day over the long haul.
“The secret of our success is found in our daily agenda.” If you continually invest in your leadership development, letting your “assets” compound, the inevitable result is growth over time.
What can you see when you look at a person’s daily agenda? Priorities, passion, abilities, relationships, attitude, personal disciplines, vision, and influence. See what a person is doing every day, day after day, and you...
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Successful leaders are learners. And the learning process is ongoing, a result of self-discipline and perseverance. The goal each day must be to get a little better, to build on the previous day’s progress.
“It is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguishes leaders from their followers.” —BENNIS AND NANUS
The problem is that most people overestimate the importance of events and underestimate the power of processes. We want quick fixes. We want the compounding effect that Anne Scheiber received over fifty years, but we want it in fifty minutes. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate events. They can be effective catalys...
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If I need to be inspired to take steps forward, then I’ll attend an event. If I want to improve, then I’ll engage in a process and stick with it.
By working to grow a little every day, I’ve grown a lot over the years. It takes time for the little things to add up to big things. Too often, we get discouraged because we don’t see great leaps in our growth. What we need to remember is that most changes occur gradually.
Sometimes we are so close to having a compounding victory and we don’t know it. If we give up before the change, we miss it. Persistence pays. Consistency compounds. As martial arts legend Bruce Lee said, “Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.”
“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his time when it comes.” —BENJAMIN DISRAELI
What a person does on a disciplined, consistent basis gets him ready, no matter what the goal.
If you want to see where someone develops into a champion, look at his daily routine.
Champions don’t become champions in the ring—they are merely recognized there.
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
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Anyone Can Steer the Ship, but It Takes a Leader to Chart the Course
Before good leaders take their people on a journey, they take steps to give the trip the best chance for success:
NAVIGATORS KEEP THEIR EMOTIONS FROM CLOUDING THEIR VISION
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented. . . . It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together.2
The best navigators are able to delay their emotions long enough to work through a problem when people are depending on them to lead. How can they do that? First, by knowing and staying true to their definition of success.
The second factor that helps good navigators keep their heads in the midst of difficult circumstances is dedication to being bigger on the inside than the outside. This comes from having more faith than fear and from embracing good values. When facing difficult times, values keep us from losing our way or giving up.
NAVIGATORS DRAW ON PAST EXPERIENCE
While successes can teach you what you’re capable of doing and gives you confidence, failures often teach greater lessons. They reveal wrong assumptions, character flaws, errors in judgment, and poor working methods.
Good navigators take time to reflect and learn from their experiences.
Reflective thinking . . . Gives you true perspective. Gives emotional integrity to your thought life. Increases your confidence in decision making. Clarifies the big picture. Takes a good experience and makes it a valuable experience.
NAVIGATORS EXAMINE THE CONDITIONS BEFORE COMMITTING
No good leader plans a course of action without paying close attention to current conditions. That would be like setting sail against the tide or plotting a course into a hurricane. Good navigators look at the present and try to anticipate the future so that they can count the cost before making commitments for themselves and their team.
NAVIGATORS LISTEN TO OTHERS
No matter how good a leader you are, you will not see everything you need to. That’s why topnotch navigators gather information from many sources.
