The Best Leader in The World:: It Could Be You
The Best Leader in The World:: It Could Be You
The Best Leader in The World:: It Could Be You
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Your answer simply has to be so true, so deep, that it will buoy you when things go painfully wrong.
Your answer simply has to be so true, so deep, that it will buoy you during the dark days and sometimes years and decades when things go painfully wrong. Dont let anyone ever tell you different; leadership hurts. Leading may be the most difficult thing you ever do. The examples of leaderships challenge are everywhere. You run a company, a division, or a team, and theres always more to do. Youre a principal or a teacher and the kids keep hanging on your doorknob needing more of you. Youre a politician and you cant even begin to keep
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everyone happy. Your community needs you, and there is no leadership role where the work is ever finished. It hurts to be the one who has to make sure the ship doesnt sink. Its a pain to be the principal in the sandbox as all the children make a mess of what you know is possible. There is nothing more important for leaders than to take responsibility and there is nothing more arduous. The loneliness of the leader is real. The sleepless nights and anxious days are an unavoidable part of truly caring deeply about what happens next. If you know why you lead, however, you can immediately switch your focus from the pain and drama to the core motivation that moves you to take risks and do the difficult work. Marcus Aeralius, Emperor of Rome, led to find the good in each person. A philosopher, unprepared to deal with the military needs of the empire, he chose to ascend with his brother Lucius. Because the Emperor of Rome knew why he led, he was able to build a team of leaders in the most powerful position in the world at the time. Leadership is excruciatingly difficult, but none of us needs to lead alone. If an Emperor can build a team of leaders, so can we.
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The best leader in the world commits to: Clarity. They have mastered how to interact with people. Most leaders want to tell people what to do and have them do it. Thats normal, and in the end it never works. Clarity is discovered, not forced. It starts when we get clear in the core areas of what we dostrategy, market, product and then openly share information. And there is a second, just as essential way to fulfill the commitment: seek answers together. Great leaders know how to help their teammates figure out what their people really want to do, and give them clear targets that meet their personal goals as they fulfill the organizations objectives. They know how to take any problem and make it a team challenge rather than one leaders responsibility. The perfect customer service at Zappos is because reps know what to do and like doing it. Stability. They know how to offer all the resources teammates need, and as they do, build a culture of trust in their organization where people realize that nothing is out of bounds. Trust is not a soft word for leaders who know how to create it. When people can always say what they really think, and then teams figure out what they need to reach new levels of success, no idea is lost and new possibilities emerge every day. Trust is the essential precursor for teammates to build their confidence so theyll take risks. Think of Ernest Shackleton, who brought one and a half tons of bacon, fruits and cakes along with a printing press to write a book in the long winter months so his Nimrod team could set a series of records in the harshest, most dangerous conditions of Antarctica. No team can fail with the security of enough bacon. Rhythm. They know how to reduce or eliminate distractions for their people, so results happen as stress is reduced. The patterns of our lives produce the flow of effort and experience that generates our best outcomes. The best leader in the world pays attention to how the work happens and how to support teammates without getting in the way so everyone builds a consistent cadence of effort and renewal. Think of Edison and his 1093 patents from a lab that hummed with teams of inventors for decades and birthed General Electric.
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To commit is to pay attention. The best leader in the world knows where to pay attention: to three words. Because leading is never easy, we realized we all need three sticky words to focus on. Whether the world is on fire and we have to keep people safe, or were in the middle of the ordinary grind and we want people to be their best, these three commitments are the essential elements of an environment where people savor working together and produce their best work. Breaking down leadership into three core commitments means you never have to think about how to lead; because you have three words to focus on you will never forget.
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Instantly, the three commitments reveal why a culture or organization is struggling, and where to focus your attention as a leader to make a difference. You have answers about how to create more clarity, stability, and rhythm for you and your organization. Is your organization open to more of what you know is possible? The best leader in the world is always looking to improve their culture, even when facing others who dont want to change or dont know they need to. You may want to build a team of leaders, but you cant if your environment is not open to supporting their development. For instance, if you dont have a development plan for every teammate, no matter how much they like you or how enthusiastic they are about what you do, theyll eventually struggle to see where your work together benefits their growth. Their lack of clarity created by your lack of a clear path to success leads to a destabilized environment for them and any rhythm they develop gets blocked by worries about their future. On the other hand, when every employee is clear about what they want, how it ties to their daily work, where they can keep improving, and how youll help them develop, now you have an environment committed to each persons growth and happiness. A culture that embodies the three commitments is ready to develop teams of leaders.
Where youre spending your time and energy each day is what youre giving your life to, and we dont want you to waste a moment.
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up the work great leaders do to become who they are. Before his political rise, for instance, John F. Kennedy led in almost every organization in which he participated, from the Boy Scouts to athletic and drama teams at Harvard and his PT boat in WWII. He actually had to use family connections to get into the war early, and he asked to enlist during the wars most treacherous period. He had family resources and expectations that he would become a leader, and he used them to become the person whose speeches we remember and whose actions as President of the United States ultimately helped prevent nuclear war, established new civil rights, and began the modern era of space exploration. He could have just as easily lived off his trust fund and bummed around the world on a sailboat. Kennedy chose to train as a leader: to get into the war, to get into politics, and ultimately to seek the Presidency. If you want to be the best leader you can be, you have to practice. If you are a leader or manager in any organization and you want to create a team of people who can lead as well as you can, they have to practice. The simple measurement for who on your team is ready to be a leader?
How much do they practice? To be a top-performer or effective teammate, each environment has skills people need to master. The people who practice are almost always the best. Want to know if someone is ready to lead, find the people who regularly practice the skills of their job.
But what we practice to be great leaders cant be complicated. Heres the story we keep hearing: I picked up this awesome book on leadership at the train station. I read it in one sitting. We then ask: How did it change you? The repeated reply is: I dont remember any of it. The content is actually wonderful. The stories, exercises, and models are both theoretically and philosophically valuable. If we had more time, if, as the new studies reveal, we werent working 50, 60, 70, and sometimes even 80 hours a week, we might be able to apply the ideas. The simple fact is we cant or dont. Even the best intentions to practice can be squashed when we dont apply the knowledge in a sustainable way. The best way to make the practice a regular habit: find your team of leaders and practice together.
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When you have a team of people that knows why they want to lead, they wont quit when the work gets hard and you can remind them of their core motivation when they forget under the strain and pressure. When you can talk about how to fulfill the three commitments, you know that together, every day, youre creating the environment for what you want to happen. When you actually make the small investments in building more clarity, stability, and rhythm, you can measure everything from the satisfaction of your teammates to the core metrics of what you do, and you will see the results get better. And you know what the biggest change will be? Instead of the political snake pits that most teams can become, instead of the emotional soap operas many organizations begin to act out, you and your teammates value each other and truly make things better.
We have to build organizations and, in fact, an entire world, where people can see the challenges and opportunities around them, feel empowered, and know that each day they can impact their progress toward the goals they desperately want to achieve.
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AbouT The AuThoRS Jon Wortmann is a non-profit leader, leadership coach at Muse Arts, LLC, and author. He was trained at Harvard University and has consulted with and offered workshops for educational, non-profit, start-up, and Fortune 100 organizations. Jay Therrien has led learning and development at three Fortune 500 companies, where his programs and content continue to serve as a core component for the leadership, communication, and professional development training used by thousands of employees at those companies today. Tom endersbe is the former Head of Field Implementation and Training at Ameriprise and CEO of a Financial Advisory Practice. They are all three authors of The Three Commitments of Leadership, being released October, 2011 by McGraw-Hill. SenD ThIS Pass along a copy of this manifesto to others.
buy The book Get more details or buy a copy of The Three Commitments of Leadership.
SubSCRIbe Sign up for our free e-newsletter to learn about our latest manifestos as soon as they are available. boRn on DATe This document was created on September 7, 2011 and is based on the best information available at that time.
AbouT ChAnGeThIS ChangeThis is a vehicle, not a publisher. We make it easy for big ideas to spread. While the authors we work with are responsible for their own work, they dont necessarily agree with everything available in ChangeThis format. But you knew that already. ChangeThis is supported by the love and tender care of 800-CEO-READ. Visit us at 800-CEO-READ or at our daily blog. CopyRIGhT Info The copyright of this work belongs to the author, who is solely responsible for the content. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs License. To view a copy of this license, visit Creative Commons or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA. Cover photo from Veer. WhAT you CAn Do You are given the unlimited right to print this manifesto and to distribute it electronically (via email, your website, or any other means). You can print out pages and put them in your favorite coffee shops windows or your doctors waiting room. You can transcribe the authors words onto the sidewalk, or you can hand out copies to everyone you meet. You may not alter this manifesto in any way, though, and you may not charge for it.
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