Maximizing Your Leadership
March 2011
Today
we'll be talking about leadership again. I hope that is a topic that
you don't mind learning more about. If you are interested in other
topics as well... at the end of this newsletter is a link to a SHORT
survey that will help me serve you better with upcoming newsletters. I
hope you'll take a few minutes to complete it.
Now, let's get back to leadership...
Leaders
(real leaders) have been studied for hundreds of years. Researchers
have studied attributes, characteristics, attitudes, behaviors,
personalities, intelligence, and values. What have we learned? That
every leader is unique and that the truly great leaders aren’t afraid of
being unique. We’ve also learned that while personality traits,
attitudes, behavior and intelligence patterns have been identified; the
key to great leadership can’t be defined by these things only.
The
key to great leadership is in your thinking, your mindset, your valuing
habits and most importantly - how you apply these things.
Great
leaders are maximizers and multipliers. Their thinking and valuing
habits reflect their perspective – not only on the job but how they live
their lives.
“Managers”,
while trying to maximize and multiply, often have mindsets that may
actually result in diminishing or minimizing. This doesn’t happen
intentionally but is usually a learned behavior or habit.
NOTE:
When I say “manager”, my intention is whose focus is on the tasks and
getting the work done. This isn’t your title but rather your role.
This isn’t who you are, but rather what you do. When I talk about a
“leader”, this person is focused on leading the people who are doing the
work. My hope is that you have both manager and leader
characteristics, but that you learn to focus more on the leadership
side.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean here.
-
Maximizers do more asking.
Minimizers do more telling.Great leaders believe in the people they are working with. Maximizers see intelligence as continually growing and developing within their team. They assume people are smart and can and will figure things out. They see their organization as full of talented people who are capable of contributing at much higher levels. Diminishers see intelligence as something basic about a person that can’t change much. When this is the case, the Diminisher believes that they have to tell their team what to do and how to do it. Do you find yourself doing more asking or telling in your leadership roles?
As I was thinking about what to write this month, I thought about celebrating this milestone. Then, I thought about the habit of celebrating in general. Have you developed this habit?
Have you ever heard of 
How much mental energy do you put into deciding:
So many people have given up on goal setting. It doesn't seem to work for them. Even "goal-oriented" people are often frustrated by their goals. But for years, the gurus have told you things like:
You may have heard the story of the young man who fell asleep in his math class. He woke up as the bell rang, looked up at the blackboard, and copied down the two problems that were written there. He assumed they were the homework for the night. He went home and labored the rest of the afternoon and into the evening knowing if he didn't complete the work he would surely fail the class. He couldn't figure out either one but he kept trying for the rest of the week. Finally, he got the answer to one and brought it to class. The teacher was absolutely stunned. The boy feared he had done too little, too late. It turned out the problem he solved was supposedly unsolvable.
For instance, he told us about the electrons from the cathode ray tube and how there was a focusing anode that pulled and directed these electrons into a tight beam. This tight, high-speed beam of electrons flies through the vacuum in the tube and hits the flat screen at the other end of the tube. In order to control where the beam lands, steering coils are used to create a magnetic field. If you ever looked inside a TV you'd see 2 sets of coils, one that controls the horizontal motion of the beam and one the controls the vertical motion. (Do any of you remember turning those wheel-like buttons on your TV to stop your picture from rolling?) By controlling the voltages in the coils, you can position the electron beam at any point on the screen. The beam paints every other line as it moves down the screen -- for example, every odd-numbered line. Then, the next time it moves down the screen it paints the even-numbered lines, alternating back and forth between even-numbered and odd-numbered lines on each pass. The entire screen, in two passes, is painted 30 times every second. (It happens so fast, your eyes and brain can't even tell that it's happening.) The screen is coated with phosphor, which emits visible light when struck by the beam. In a color screen, there are three phosphors arranged as dots or stripes that emit red, green and blue light. (Our science teacher told me to go look real close at our TV and I would see a whole host of red, green and blue dots.) The electrons falling back to their normal state are what emits the color of light. From those 3 colors (RGB), every color on your TV is created. The story was amazing to me!
Let's use an example that you may have had or at least seen in the past... You're driving along in traffic, keeping a safe distance between you and the car in front of you, when out of nowhere a car zips up beside you and swerves into the "safe distance" space between you and the car in front of you. This caused you to put on your brakes and re-establish your safe distance.
So, why all the drama? I can tell you why. Because in this incident as well as many others throughout your day, you are NOT reacting to reality; you are reacting to a fairy tale. This fairy tale is a story that your mind quickly (within milliseconds) created to make 'sense' of what it just perceived. You told yourself a story - maybe it was about right and wrong or what should or should not happen. Your reaction wasn't based on a near tragic collision; it was based on a fairy tale... a story.