A
leader's job is to step into everyone's shoes and find ways to make the path
less treacherous, stressful and demoralizing.
An
old friend called me yesterday and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn about
where his life was taking him. During the discussion, he commented, “I can’t
believe the idiots I have to put up with at the office.” It is easy to dismiss
people around you, or beneath you on the corporate scale, as incompetent, but
I've realized that everyone else’s job always looks easier and less stressful,
until you walk a mile in their shoes.
Here
are three keys to building that understanding and leading more
effectively.
1. Develop the heart of a servant.
As
a leader, this is incredibly important to understand. Your job is to step into
everyone’s shoes and find ways to make the path less treacherous, stressful and
demoralizing. A leader is in service to those around them; and the best ones do
this so consistently, that their team takes it for granted.
Serving
your team’s needs, without losing your status as their boss is a balancing act.
The key counter-balance to being a servant is the projection of confidence.
Well-established confidence in one’s self is the perfect pairing for the heart
of a servant. But how can a leader project confidence, even when they’re having
a bad day?
2. Physical fitness and presence are important.
I’ve
heard some of my colleagues lament the fact that “young and energetic” is
sometimes outweighing experience when opportunities come up to climb the
corporate ladder. Balancing the workplace generation gap is a challenge, and
when it comes time for a promotion, the image of the company can hang in the
balance.
3. Over-prepare in private.
There
are few things more frustrating than working for a leader that has little grasp
of the facts, or reality surrounding a decision. A great leader takes the
counsel of his team but has invested the time and energy to educate themselves
on the situation as well. Counsel should be centered around providing a
different perspective, instead of a start-to-finish education on the
problem.
Confident
leaders serve their team best by being well-informed, current and aggressively
prepared. Robert Pagliarini shared some insights on productive meetings in this
CBS Money Watch article. Spoiler alert: preparation is a key component to
experiencing a favorable outcome. If you understand what you want, and have done
the research to provide a foundation of facts, you can better nudge the
conversation in a direction that leads to the outcome you’re looking
for.
The
best salespeople, team leaders and negotiators don’t worry about who does the
most talking. They worry more about the direction of the conversation. After
all, if the conversation is headed in a direction that leads to your desired
outcome, does it really matter who does the talking?
A
confident leader understands the value of preparation and uses their depth of
knowledge to steer the conversation. In the end, the participants feel ownership
in the final decision, even if it was different from their original
intention.
“People are rewarded in public for what they practice for years in private.” -- Tony Robbins
Great
leaders commit to being amazing long before the meeting or the moment where
their confident leadership is needed. They spend long hours in the gym, in the
office studying and developing the habit of serving those around them. The
confidence that is projected in the moment is the result of hard work in
private.
But
there’s one thing every entrepreneur and corporate leader can do to negate the
advantages of youth: stay fit! Thanks to the plethora of knowledge the human
race has collected on health and wellness, it’s possible to look fit and trim at
any age. More than youth, physical fitness and presence is really what is valued
by a company worried about the image of their team to the outside world. Don’t
let a date on a birth certificate define you.
SOURCE:
ENTREPRENEUR
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