7 Surprising Strategies that Elevate Leaders
Fools see lack of wisdom in others, not in themselves.
People who need help the most, seek it least.
“The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” Socrates
Over-confidence is a fool’s mirage.
Don’t think of others when you think of growth. What if you’re the one who needs to elevate their leadership?
7 surprising strategies that elevate leaders:
- Play dumb. Knowledge and skills you currently have will take you where you have already been. Old answers close minds. Ask dumb questions.
- Make it bad. Don’t minimize the challenges you face or the mistakes you’ve made. Minimizing dampens pain. Make things worse if you want to elevate your leadership.
- Hope less. Hope keeps you doing the same things. Find behavioral reasons that validate hope. What makes you think the future will be different? Hope is delusion if you don’t change behaviors.
- Leverage strategic failure. It’s better to fail trying something new than succeed with an unsatisfying present.
- Let it hurt. Over-protection makes people weak, indulgent, and entitled. Dig into screwups, disappointments, and failures.
- What did you do? Don’t blame others for being stuck.
- What are you learning about yourself? Unexamined failure is a squandered future.
- What would you like to do differently? Ambiguity can’t be measured or improved. Get clear, specific, and behavioral when describing what you’ll do different next time.
- What will you do if you don’t make progress?
- Eliminate ineffective patterns. Stop doing things that result in recurring frustration, disappointment, and stagnation. What do you need to stop? Stopping takes more boldness than starting.
- Reflect on your need to matter. It takes courage to own your deep desires to make a difference. How will you worry less about what others think, while living with an open heart?
What has elevated your leadership?
What suggestions would you make to people who want to elevate their leadership?
Dan to modify something I mentioned on one of your Coaching posts, these are Three factors that have been critical to my own Leadership:
1. Shared Commitment- with your company’s goals and within your own team. If these do not align the greatest leaders or teams can not succeed.
2. Confidence in your own ability and your team to execute and delivery on the shared goals. Sometimes you know what needs to be done or sometimes you must believe you will figure it out in time.
3. Control required. You need to understand how much control and independence you have to execute plans and be comfortable with the limitations your company requires.
Excellent post, Brad
Brad James
Dan, Your Blog has elevated my Leadership, not to mention my company has added to my load in a positive sense, supporting, encouraging, challenging me beyond my comfort zone everyday! The STA group has also driven me to new challenges as well with a talented group of individuals being there to grow my courage to do better for others! Thank you for coming into our lives!
Thank you Dan for your enlightening article! It is great for the young ones to have people like you sharing their own hand-on experience in public. I find your 5th point the most important and the source of any kind of success. Wounds of someone’s personal history, construct the biggest part of his today’s experience. So “let it hurt” indeed!
Hi Dan,
Great post.
To answer your parting question, I have found that the one thing that has elevated my ‘being a leader’, and not necessarily in a leadership role, is to envision and live into a future that inspires and addresses concerns bigger than myself. Whenever I have been able to do this, I have found others, including folks who lead me, come to live into that future with me and take actions in the “here and now” to make that future come true.
Cheers
Shakti
I’m a fairly new director of a unit and I’ve really benefited from this blog! I’m not sure where I picked this up but I was sitting in a meeting with leaders from other units and it was becoming a “festival of complaints” about what we DON’T have and CAN’T do and I stood up and said, “Well, I like to say to my staff that while we do clearly have limitations we need to focus less on what we don’t have and can’t do, and more on where we are going and what we need to get there!” I feel like leadership is about vision AND reality, and pushing the boundary from today into tomorrow. I try really hard not to be limited by the reality of TODAY!
Dan,
For the most part, I agree with the things you’ve said here. I am a little confused about your second point, “Make it bad.” I understand that we shouldn’t minimize the challenges we face. I am confused by what you mean when you say “Make things worse if you want to elevate your leadership.” While minimizing can lead to lacking confidence, I also think that over emphasizing can lead to entitlement. Perhaps I am not understanding what you mean; perhaps you could give an example or clarify?
I do appreciate the Socrates quote. I’ve said many times as a graduate student that the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Education and experience are two of the most effective drivers of perspective, in my opinion, and that makes a good leader. I think a healthy dose of humility balanced with confidence in one’s area of specialty makes a leader aware and wise. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I do make the most informed and educated decisions possible in my own line of work. I have also learned that the ability to delegate is one of the most important tasks as a leader, and that requires reflection and understanding of one’s weaknesses and others’ strengths, in order to delegate effectively.