MORE THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP
Work to understand how you are perceived. How you see yourself reflects your strengths, but how others see you often reveals your weaknesses. Your strengths will only take you so far as the higher you get the fewer touch points you get with people, and their perception of you will be based on indirect contact, hearsay, snapshots, and things you say and do taken out of context. Seldom will someone else tell you how you are perceived, how others see you, what you really are, in others’ opinions. You must work to put yourself in vulnerable situations, where candid feedback can happen without people feeling they are personally attacking you and retribution will happen. You must drive those situations from the top down.
Learn from people you don’t like. Often, we don’t learn from people we don’t like because we let our egos and emotions cloud our ability to be constant learners. What we often don’t like about others are really our insecurities. Once we can accept that, we can become better leaders and people. If we don’t, then we will find ourselves in situations- new or broader responsibilities- and can’t figure out how to influence the organization to get better, i.e. how to influence people with much broader perspectives and what it takes to motivate them.
If you want to grow, don’t surround yourself with like-minded people. In most cases people with similar backgrounds, likes, goals, also think and come up with similar ideas that please the group- not the larger organization- stifling innovation. You must put yourself in situations and develop communication channels and scenarios, to stimulate those that aren’t like you. Otherwise, they just go along with the group you surround yourself with. You have to be the one to reward people who take risks.
RLTW!
mike