“Do want to be in charge, or inspire people to be their personal best?”
Leadership is not about being in charge, chairing meetings, and controlling the environment. Great leadership is about helping people become all they can be through personal relationships.
It’s coming alongside your team for the purpose of getting to know them, not just using them to accomplish organizational goals. It’s observing them in action and helping them make the necessary adjustments to be successful. Leaders add value by improving individuals and then molding them into a team before setting goals and attacking the mission.
Great leaders talk about what the team has accomplished, good leaders talk about what they accomplished with the teams help and poor leaders don’t talk about anyone but themselves. All management and personnel problems are first a leadership failure.
Leaders most people want to follow start with a plan that brings measurable and sustainable change in the lives of their team members before they talk about what it’s going to take to make the organization better. They know that confident and competent individuals’ makeup the best teams.
Highly successful leaders know that without significant relationships none of this is possible. Nothing demoralizes a team quicker than having a leader who makes demands on team members with whom they do not have enough relational equity to cover those demands.
Titles and positional authority may keep them showing up for a while because they need the paycheck. Leaders beware, at some point they start showing up somewhere else because they found a leader who bases his or her leadership on strong relationships, not sacrificing people on the altars of bottom line profits and production goals.
Do people celebrate or tolerate your leadership? Your team member turnover rate says it all!