What's the most important thing most leaders need to learn? What keeps them from doing so?
What's the most important thing most leaders need to learn? What keeps them from doing so?
From my personal experience and perspective I believe the most important thing most leaders need to learn is themselves and not their family, career or the business. What I mean by themselves is that they should be able to exercise self leadership and management. Make sure they pursue things based on their calling and not based on needs or money. Make a lifelong commitment to be authentic to themselves and others and building their character. If you can't exercise private victory in your personal life how do you expect to display public victory in public life. How can you be a good father or husband if your private moral life is in shamble? How can you tell your team to be authentic, professional, empathic when you yourself fail to do so?
Secondly, I believe in stewardship. And as leaders we need to understand that what we have today is a result of some divine benevolence( not luck) and there is no guarantee that you know what will happen tomorrow. We've got to be faithful to what we have- faithful to our vision, faithful to our family, our friends, our people, our clients/customers,partners etc. We cannot be simply swayed by business trends or compromise on our vision, values and our people. As leaders we've got to exercise excellence in what we do with what we HAVE. That is stewardship. We have to be ENLARGED in our inside even before we take steps to enlarge our business or others.
Thirdly, this is where we can start focusing on external growth. Focus on building your family, your people, and your business. This is what I call putting the horse before the cart and not the other way round.
And as leaders what we need to learn first is put first thing first. First thing first is putting the horse before the cart. And one of the reason many leaders fail to do this is because they dont have someone to mentor them or to whom they are accountable to spiritually or otherwise.
The reason why Leadership is not part of our gene structure is because...it is a learned behavior. Desipite the hundreds of thousands of books on the subject, we continue to struggle to find good leaders and to help people make the transition from manager to leader...why?
Leadership is not behavior modification alone. Dont know why many start with the outside in approach to become a leader. Its not the behaving alone that makes you a leader, its the becoming that makes you a leader. The behaving cannot sustain leadership performance as behaving will last as long as the office door is open. The "becoming" takes leadership outside the office to your home and to your community.
Reasons why many books does not address the real subject on leadership is because most of them are academicians with no practical knowledge and experience. And most others share their own concept and understanding on leadership. There is no clear direction on how to build leadership foundation in their personal lives. No building is reliable with weak foundation so are leadership subjects that discuss only theories and models without setting guidelines of laying proper foundation.
And to helping managers becomes leaders, needs the involvement of the Senior management. Organisations are bound by rules, regulations and practices which does not allow creative expression of principle based decision making. You cannot put new wine into old wineskin. We need to change the appraisal system to evaluate managers with equal emphasis on their leadership performance not just on their stated KRAs. KRAs need to be reformulated to include leadership competent KSAs. And well alot more...but i guess I've said enough.