Month: January 2016

“No leadership style can be effective if the leader is not respected. Respect comes from having meaningful relationships. Meaningful relationships come from being proactive in understanding each person, their needs, challenges, and opportunities”

Very short message for this post – the heading above does not need to be elaborated on too much.  We must be 100% committed to having strong relationships with our team members.    Only then can we positively impact each person, which is required for the entire organization to be positively impacted.

 

“Be optimistic enough to invest and plan for growth, but paranoid enough to inspect, validate, and execute”

I heard someone say that the best leaders have a constant mild case of paranoia.   To me this means the following for those organizations that have leadership teams who fit the description:

  • They look for every opportunity to grow, but only pursue the opportunities that will benefit their customers, team members, and all other stakeholders
  • They put systems in place to ensure they are providing exponential customer service
  • They set quantifiable goals, and then consistently inspect performance
  • They hold everyone in their organization accountable for setting goals, achieving goals, and for delivering exponential service to all customers (external and internal)
  • They invite feedback and have good self-awareness regarding internal improvements needed
  • They are the best in their industry, yet remain humble.  They don’t forget to celebrate, but never celebrate too long.
  • They consistently investigate the competition and position themselves to win
  • They always do something about their gut feelings

Being too optimistic or paranoid will lead to bad results.   Leaders really need a good dose of optimism, and then in order to plan (ask all the right questions to formulate a sound and actionable plan) and execute (working with the best people, and inspecting what we expect), they have to be comfortable living with a mild case of paranoia.