Leadership - “Doing the right things”

Key Insight

● Key traits of every leader: calm, stability, composure, optimism. Why? Because the leader guides us, and we must trust the leader. The leader must demonstrate stability that will surely be needed in difficult times. The leader must “sell” us the vision, and motivate us to devote our time to help him achieve it.

● Emotional and overly strong reactions to mistakes of the people we lead, especially mistakes we could easily make ourselves, are something a good leader will never allow themselves.

● Also very important: Humility!

○ Research shows this trait is almost universally present among nearly all successful leaders. Why? Because successful leaders know they aren’t the smartest, and you’re often not closest to the concrete problem, and it’s very possible someone understands something better and deeper than us.

○ As we’ve said, constant learning is an absolute fact of the 21st century and there’s no discussion. If you want to accomplish something, you first must invest a lot of time and effort in deeply understanding the subject. To learn something, we must first be humble and say: “I don’t know that.”

● Leadership principle often forgotten is that it’s easier to motivate people to do a hard thing they believe is important than an easy thing they believe is unimportant. Goals and vision are also key to success here.

● Autonomy, top expertise and purpose - A good leader will provide the people he leads with the opportunity to achieve these three things, and then step aside and let them work.

● The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership - Very good reference and reminder (it lands in my inbox once a month).