Why even consider becoming a leader in the first place? When something goes wrong it’s your fault. When other things go right, your team gets the credit. If your decisions are wrong, people could lose their jobs. You are responsible for casting a vision and getting buy-in. You have to hold people accountable when their performance dips. You have to formulate the strategies and distill them down into achievable tasks. Your emotional workload goes way up. So, what’s the attraction? For some, it’s the allure of more money. For others, it’s a power thing. Still for others, it’s just what we are taught we should want. Like we can only realize our potential through promotion (which is nonsense). Considering all of the potential downsides, here’s the only good reason to take on the job: Leadership is the only thing that can create enough leverage to change what is wrong. To change what is wrong for your customers. To change what is wrong among your team members. To change what is wrong about your organization. To change what is wrong in the world. That’s why we do it. For the people that are only looking for stature and and ego stroke, please refrain. For the people wanting to literally change the world, we need you now more than ever before. #leadership
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...