I AM the Decision Maker!
One of my favorite client-leaders called me the other day and said, “I need some help. Can we meet pretty quick?”
That’s affirming to me, because that’s what I do. Help leaders. So we met. Pretty quick.
Almost the first words out of his mouth were, “I am sort of embarrassed to call you for help because I think being President I am supposed to know this stuff”.
Whoa, horse.
What a terrible trap WE have built designed to catch and imprison nobody but us, and the people we look up to.
The trap is that once we get in a position of leadership, “POOF”, we are automatically the grand poobah of a discipline that has had more ink spilled on it than would fill all the Starbucks cups ever made?
Right. Wrong.
We get into positions of leadership because we do something right, like first of all being in the right place at the right time and then secondly, working successfully in a different discipline than leadership, i.e. sales, engineering, accounting, production, even managing. And then we get knighted to lead – a whole different discipline – and suddenly we (and those around us with high expectations of our capabilities) expect us to become expert leaders because we have a title.
Ridiculous, and ultimately damaging to not only to the leaders but also the people who choose to follow.
Jim Collins of Good to Great fame says that there are only two common themes to really good and really long-term dynamic leadership:
The personal will to get something important accomplished, and
The humility to know to ask for help.
Good leaders make good decisions.
To make good decisions, leaders need good information.
To get good information, it has to be pursued, sought out and refined.
Leadership is not a revelation.
Leadership is a process of humble perseverance.
