- Leadership is the willingness to put oneself a risk.
- Leadership is the passion to make a difference with others.
- Leadership is being dissatisfied with current reality.
- Leadership is taking responsibility while others are making excuses.
- Leadership is seeing the possibility in a situation while others are seeing limitations.
- Leadership is the readiness to stand out in the crowd.
- Leadership is an open minded and an open heart.
- Leadership is the ability to submerge your ego for the sake of what is best.
- Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream.
- Leadership is inspiring others with a vision of what they can contribute.
- Leadership is the power of one harnessing the power of many.
- Leadership is your heart speaking to the hearts of others.
- Leadership is the integration of heart, head and soul.
- Leadership is the capacity to care, and in caring, to liberate the ideas, energy, and capacity of others.
- Leadership is above all, courageous.
Few leaders are successful unless a lot of people want them to be. No one ever got to a leadership role alone. Everyone needs a helping hand now and then.
Taking people with you is more for filling and pays dividends in time. A solo mountain climber has huge risk involved. Its much safer, enjoyable and likely for greater success if they have a guide supporting them by holding the rope below. If they slip or fall there is someone their to hold the rope. They work together as a team. The leader is finding and setting the path while his guide is supporting him along his journey. To help others up you must stoop down. To be successful you must be prepared to stoop.
Leadership is relational as much as it is positional. An individual who takes a relationship approach to leadership will never be lonely. If you are in a leadership role, do not rely on your title to convince people to follow you. Build relationships. Win people over. Do that and you will never be a lonely leader.
Consider your employees as teammates, partners in success. Work with your people and not enforce that they work for you, without them you cannot succeed. Without me they cannot succeed. We are a team. We reach our goals together. We need each other.
People working together for a common vision is an incredible experience. I was once privileged to sit amongst an orchestra while they played. The conductor asked each individual to play at their individual best and not worry or listen about others around them. As good as each individual person in the team is at his or her own individual skills; it wasn’t until they played as a team that the true experience was felt.
Our focus is on what we are trying to achieve together, not on hierarchies or professional distance or the preservation of power.
Never climb the mountain alone. Make sure that the team make it to the top together. Some people you invite along for the climb may overtake you and eventually climb higher that you do. If you where there to give them a hand in there journey someday they may return the favor and pull you up with them.