It's hard to believe it's been 2.5 weeks since my last posting! Thanks to all for comments on many of the threads - I'm really learning from your input and I hope that this community is also starting to learn from each other. After all - that's the goal of the blog.
To emphasize this (and to ensure I don't go a full three weeks between posts) I'm going to start this one off with input from YOU! I'll add my input at the end so that you can all contribute and collaborate in keeping with where I hope this blog will go - a true community discussing leadership philosophy.
The question is: "What is THE single most important thing anyone's said to you regarding leadership (in one sentence)?".
Looking forward to all of your replies. See you at the end of this one!
Good leaders surround themselves with people that are better than they are!
ReplyDeleteTrust Your Eyes.
ReplyDeleteI'll give my top three, including one that needs a bit of explanation (and involves some crudity - but seeing as we're having this leadership discussion AT THE PUB, I guess I can say it).
ReplyDelete1. Lead from the front
2. Trust and verify
And the third which needs some context.
I was having a whinge, at a pub oddly enough, about having to basically "hold a guy's balls" in order to get the best work out of him.
The astute reply from my mentor at the time was "In leadership, you better learn to love holding people's balls. But don't worry. After a while it gets easier. Especially once you learn how high and how warm your hands need to be."
So my third is:
3. Leadership is all about holding people's balls.
Which is to say, in order to get the most out of people, you have to really know how each individual gets motivated.
Or maybe number three should be:
3. Leading a team is actually leading individuals on the team.
Thanks for all the comments on this one. Reading them it’s great to see a common thread around people. Surround yourself with great people, trust, and understand what individuals need to help them be successful (aka hold their balls – thanks Phil).
ReplyDeleteHaving said all this, the best leadership advice I've had is very much in sync with this same theme. Fourteen years ago, on the first day I took on a role managing people, the Director of that business spoke to me and said, "Mark, the most important thing in this role is your people". It’s sage advice, and true to this day, however, what I've found most interesting about that advice is how much my own interpretation of it has changed over time.
First, I took it to mean "protect your people at all costs".
Then I took it to mean "develop all your people to be successful".
After a couple more years, and a few failures trying to ensure people were successful in the roles they were in I interpreted it as "Coach and develop, but don’t let people fail in a role that they can’t succeed in".
After a few more years and more experience seeing other successful leaders, I added "be passionate about constantly searching for and getting the best possible people on your team".
More recently I’ve added “when you’re a manager, people are more important than completing tasks” (a crucial one for the task focused engineers to learn – me included).
Today, I'm still learning what "the most important thing is your people" means. I’m sure it will continue to morph, however, at the core to me it means “think about people first and genuinely care for their success”.
Expanding on that - get the best people on board, continuously strive to find the best people, trust and empower, create an environment for success, constantly provide positive as well as adjusting feedback, coach, match skills and capabilities to roles, celebrate success, and take responsibility for failures. Think about people first and genuinely care for their success.