When it comes to leadership development, sweeping corporate mandates and expensive training initiatives are rarely as effective as consistent blocking and tackling. Your own practices are capable of creating a new and next generation of professionals that carry the right approaches and ultimately innovate and improve upon your achievements.
I’ve long believed that the best leaders are teachers. Not lecturers, but teachers. As teachers, they challenge us to think, to explore, to experiment, to learn and to keep trying.
Tom Peters, in his excellent and inspirational collection of little things that have big impact (The Little Big Things-163 Ways to Pursue Excellence), reminds us how important our internal customers are to our success. We focus on external customers for all of the right reasons, but often forget that the people that get things done for you and everyone else are typically sitting somewhere deep inside an organization.
The best leaders that I know are also the best talent scouts. They are acute observers of people and extraordinarily quick to identify individuals with potential.
Mastering the art and science of feedback is the closest thing you will find to a silver bullet when it comes to leading others.
Just about everyone knows someone that never got the memo on how to get to the point in conversations. I warmly reference these people in my mind as Watchmakers. Instead of giving you the time of day when you ask for it, they tell you in painful detail how to build the watch. While command of detail is impressive, the need to share it with everyone that you come in contact with can be debilitating to your career.
When it comes to leadership, your intentions count. Blind ambition might help you climb the ladder as an individual contributor, but it won’t help you galvanize groups of people to move mountains, conquer markets and develop a culture that sustains excellence. You need to work hard every day to grow your personal and professional credibility.
As challenging as it sounds, it’s important for you to find 10-minutes in your workday to block out or step away from phones and e-mail and all of the other activities that keep your brain completely occupied, and just think.
Something funny happened on the way to producing and writing two blogs. I discovered that I am only capable of managing one competently. Oh, and I’m certain there are at least a few management lessons here in my blogging misfire.
That moment in time when something has gone horribly wrong a customer is an ideal opportunity to not only repair but strengthen your relationship with your customer. The key however to winning a “moment of truth” is to ensure that your people recognize and immediately react. My recent experience at a local bicycle shop underscores how critical it is for your business to win those “moments of truth” every time.
