Leadership and Communication

11/23/2010 2:17:54 AM #

My leadership experience also began as drum major (Corps Commander) for my high school band.  Oddly, I went on to lead seminars for adults on leadership in buisiness/personal that I continue today.  Sometimes I think about my time spent fumbling through being a leader in the beginning and wonder what kind of leader I could have been if I went back and re-did it now that I have a rich background of experience to draw from.  

There is far too much to say to put in a blog post so I've chosen a couple of ideas that are not the traditional 'leadership mantras'.  I'll assume we've got those covered.

Are you at home and unthreatened in your position?  Many people are in positions they have not allowed themselves to fully accept or fully authorize themselves to hold.  As a result, most of the conscious and unconscious attention they give their tasks revolve around reassuring their position to themselves and others.  This can be overt domination or covert manipulation.  I have scored a few points in that column and every point in that column removes at least two points in the 'moving toward common goal' column.  It's important to have fully authorized oneself to not just hold the position you've been given, but to also authorize yourself to create a picture in your head of what it looks like to have your group running on all cylinders.  It almost doesn't matter what picture you come up with, so long as it is a positive one, one you enjoy thinking about, and one that you've authorized yourself to bring about.  (There is not 'the answer' for how to accomplish this constitution within oneself.  In some of the seminars I lead, we spend a lot of time here.)

B.  Get out of the way as much as possible.  This may be contrary to some of the teachings you've had.  There is an ancient Chinese poem that ends "when the task is accomplished, the work is done, the people will remark, 'we have done it ourselves.'"  Again, a mistake that I made far too often early on is not getting out of the way enough for the voice of reason and forward progress to come from some of the stronger people in the group.  While there may be times your voice needs to bellow above the rest, the group will ALWAYS be carried in the direction of your vision much faster by the voices of others.  In this context you also want to draw out some of the more bashful voices in your group and make sure their voices get heard now and again.  And with this one, get creative!  (Again, as an act of creativity, this can be accomplished in an infinite number of ways.  Find someone to bounce ideas off of for how best to empower those voices both publicly and privately.)

C.  Get to like ALL of the people in your group.  As a leader, it is your job to get your personal feelings out of the way.  Abe Lincoln said, "I don't like that person.  I shall take it upon myself to get to know them better."  Even if you have a jaded history with someone in your group, you need to find a way.  Take them to lunch.  Bury the hatchet.  Get over yourself and make a relationship there.

D.  Make sure you care about the individual success of the people underneath you every bit as much as the team success.  Sure, you should spend most of the time and energy of the team focused on the team goal.  But, never EVER take your eye off of the success of your people.  Meet with them individually to find out what their goals are or if they have any that way you know what to get behind.  It's critical to team synergy that each member of the team would trust their future in the group (and maybe their development beyond) to you.  That can't happen unless you have your eye on that.  I've seen terrible leaders that can't lead two people in silent prayer that paid tons of attention to ONLY THIS in a business setting and it allowed them to win as a manager/leader.

Well, that's what I have for the moment.  There's so much more.  I'll say one more thing which is:  Nothing anyone tells you about leadership will make as much difference as your own discovery.  Some wisdom can be academically taught.  But, most of it is only gained through trial and experience.  

Have fun!

Jared Vermiglio |