Leadership is defined by Webster's as "the act of leading a group of people or organization." This sounds sort of vague to me. How about you? I was always taught in school not to define a word by using the same word or a root of the word. Looks like someone wasn't listening....
I look at our state and federal government agencies (or at least the ones that I deal with on a regular basis), and I listen to my clients speak about their trepidation when talking to/dealing with/listening to agents from these offices. I listen to the rhetoric and the yammering about elections and primaries and candidates. I watch as people complain and pass the buck continually. Somewhere, sometime the yammering and the blaming has to stop and someone has to lead.
If you are a business owner, how do you feel about your leadership qualities? For myself, I suck at it. I have worked on those qualities and identified some glaring short-falls of my own, and I'm getting better. Why is this so hard?
Because taking ultimate responsibility for the livelihoods of others is hard for some people. Even harder still is learning to lead a group of people, whether it's an office or a second grade class. As some of you know, we used to have an office in Greenwood. What a colossal failure that was! Why? Because I couldn't lead...I couldn't lead in my own office, let alone in an office 50 miles away. Now, this office is run by my wife and me, and we work together as a team. That was where I found my answer.
I can lead a team as long as we're all rowing in the same direction (how often does this happen, really?). I have the vision, I have the stamina, and I have the wherewithal to make it work. And darn it, people like me. But, it's nearly impossible to lead when there is no defined vision and there are people continually pulling the entire operation to one side or the other, away from the vision. Now, Meghan and I work together on a common goal - be loyal to our "why" and serve our clients as best we can within the framework of our "why." It has made all the difference in the world!
How do you get better at leading? Define your "why"....why are you here, why do you do what you do? Then rally everyone around your "why"...your clients/customers, your team, your family, your hamster. If you get this far, you'll have accomplished what a lot of business owners can't do. And I can almost guarantee you'll see a difference in your quality of life and your bottom line as a result of it. Give it a shot....
Leadership would then be defined as "the act or quality of someone who has discovered his/her "why" and has communicated it to the team." See, I didn't use the root word or the actual word in my definition.
