It’s really hard to generate capacity, focus, and motivation when you are solely trying to serve your own interests. Focus and motivation require considerable “other” focus if you are going to really get them right. Even capacity requires as much focus on the people you are leading as on your own goals. “Leaders” (I use …
One reaction I get to my definition of leadership is that, on the surface, it sounds very exploiting. I don’t look at it that way.The idea of leverage is neutral. The outcome of that leverage is what we judge as evil, oppressive, greedy, good, self serving, or heroic. Ghandi leveraged other people’s abilities to bring …
The idea of leverage, as I’m using it, has to do with being able to significantly extend your personal ability (output) through others. That’s what leveraging human capital is all about. If you are a supervisor and have two people working for you, but they basically are producing as much as you could on your …
My definition of leadership is actually quite simple. An individual’s leadership ability is the difference between what they alone can accomplish and what they can accomplish through others. Leadership is about leverage. Sometimes that leverage is for the good, sometimes not. But, if you are leveraging yourself you are a leader. The more you are …
I’ve struggled with the notion that you can’t define a leader without defining a follower. However, I’ve come to think of that differently. It is true that you need both. However, I think that the notion of “follower” has turned into something bad. Perhaps it is because of all of the emphasis on becoming a …
Read more “If being a leader is “good”, then is being a follower “bad”?”
Did you ever use a magnifying glass to burn a leaf? Once you get the light focused properly, it’s amazing how quickly the leaf burns. It’s almost instantaneous. Even more amazing is that nothing really happens while you are fiddling with the lens. It’s not until you get the focus just right that anything happens. …
As much as we often try, we can’t control the present. What we can control, however, is our reaction to the present. That’s what differentiates a good leader. That person is in command of his or her reaction to the present. Consider this scene from Apollo 13. Aside from the “big” problem resulting from the …