Fear is a common companion for leaders, indicating progress and growth. Embrace fear to sharpen instincts, draw support, and stay humble.
Leadership may require going beyond normal performance levels, up to "11," in certain situations such as facing extraordinary challenges, breaking a cycle of routine, or seizing opportunities. Effective leaders know when to push their team to their highest potential.
Celebrate actions, not just numbers. Reinforce values by ringing the bell for kindness, teamwork, and encouragement. Leaders shape culture by what they celebrate.
You can't build a great team, if you don't know who keeps coming up with all those great ideas. As a leader, you need to know who your big idea generators are.
As a leader, one of the most under-rated instruments in your toolbox is a simple tuning fork.
When your leadership battery is fully charged, everyone around you wins.
The health of your inner-world directly affects your ability to lead effectively.
As a leader, your true test comes in contentious moments when stakes are high and emotions run deep. Building a healthy culture during heated debates requires balancing passion with composure, anchoring arguments in facts over rhetoric, and focusing on issues rather than individuals.
Every leader leads two teams; there’s the team you inherited, and there’s the team you built.
When your leadership seems like it has hit a slump, it can be tempting to look for any shortcut to get things going again.
If you are indeed growing in your leadership, you should see evidence of a growing number of leaders emerging whom you are building into.
As a leader you must project optimism. But when you cross the line into exaggeration or hyperbole, your leadership is facing significant risks.
When you say, “I hate meetings!” your team could be receiving a message that might be damaging your culture more than you ever realized.
One of the most important functions of effective leadership is to master the power of perspective.
Leadership is about producing results, not reports. If you’ve ever encountered a leader who seemed more interested in inspecting activities than in inspiring results, you’ve encountered Clipboard Leadership.
Knowing the pace at which you take action as a leader is often as important as the action itself.
The power of how you communicate as a leader is not limited to the great vision-casting speeches you make. Much of your impact takes place in your day to day conversations.
The starting place for building an effective “dream team” is in having a crystal clear picture of the qualities you want in the people.
In challenging times, leaders are called upon to exhibit inspiring levels of courage. But finding the ways to develop such courage can be a leader’s greatest challenge.
Leaders solve problems. And whatever problem you’re facing, clarifying your thinking is always the first-step to move you towards a solution. Such clarity of thought became something of a lifeline when I encountered a serious problem in a small airport in an impoverished country in east Africa.
