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Are You a Guide or Explorer?

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Explorer or Guide

What kind of leader are you?  Are you a Guide? Or are you an Explorer? Are both of these leaders with just different skill sets? What is the difference?

A Guide — A guide is someone who has been down this particular path before. They probably have been this way before many times. They have gotten really good at navigating the simplest, safest, and best route for folks to follow. A guide has specific experience related to the specific journey on which you find yourself. They have been where you want to go. They have returned to where you are. And they are now ready to go again and brave the same dangers and traverse the same rough terrain that beckons you.

Guides carry a huge responsibility. Often they are responsible for the life and welfare of the folks who put their trust in them. But folks are willing to trust them because they have a proven track record in the particular journey that needs to be undertaken.

An Explorer — An explorer is a brave individual to be sure. In fact, they may very well be a

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New Beginnings

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New Beginnings

Everyone loves to have a new beginning.

To be sure, we all need new beginnings.

Some come everyday.  Some come during certain seasons in life.

A new beginning is the end of what has come before and starting on the path to what is next.

Spring is a season of new beginnings. After the winter when everything has either died or gone dormant, Spring is the time when things are “reborn”, “revitalized” or “reawakened”.

Spring is when Easter is as well. Easter is the time when we remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He died so that we might have new beginnings. He rose again so that we might have new beginnings. Jesus’ death and resurrection are all about us closing the door on the past sins, failures and dead-ends and receiving His free gift of new life!

Since this is Easter weekend it seems fitting to consider the new beginnings available to us.

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Beware of the Lure to be Likable

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Fishing Lure

I guess I am still not done with the whole “like-ability” discussion.  So, I continue the discussion with a warning to beware of the lure to be likable.

Leaders are often placed under a tremendous amount of pressure to be relatable and to be nice.  Many follow the natural tendency to want to be liked because it feels much easier to be liked than to be viewed as capable and accomplishment driven.

Few leaders want to be the bad guy.  And those that do want to be the “heavy” are not the kind of leader that I am drawn to!

But as leaders we are expected to make the tough decisions that serve the organization or the team’s best interests.  Trying to be too nice can in fact be lazy, inefficient, irresponsible, and harmful to individuals and the organization.

I’ve seen this happen many times in my personal and professional career.  Leaders get almost addicted to a sense of being likable.  They make a mistake in staffing or in a major decision.  This can happen to anyone, and the best way to remedy the situation is to address it quickly. However, despite the obvious solution to the rest of the team, some leaders keep on trying to make it work.

While it is a good thing to follow our instinct to stick to it and be consistent, if you fast forward a few weeks or months, the situation is no better and often worse.

There’s a key lesson here for any leader

Nice is only good when it’s coupled with a rational perspective and the ability to make difficult choices.  

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The Genesis Model of Creative Leadership

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God and Adam

Creative leaders draw the best thinking out of the individual team members before calling a general brainstorming session.

This is the assertion in Chapter 1 of Tom Harper’s book, Leading from the Lion’s Den.  In his book he presents leadership lessons from every book of the Bible.  Consider this one from Genesis:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Gen 1:1

Many organizations today foster creative teamwork through collaborative instant messaging, chat windows, discussion boards, and project groups.  My company uses a myriad of technology tools as well as recently construction an entire corporate campus to foster collaboration.

Though today’s online cooperation might appear to be a new kind of brainstorming, it is actually based on a tried and true model of creativity. The old standard concept is simple: the best creative thinking is done when individuals have a chance to think before they collaborate.

Not everyone thinks well in groups. The rapid-fire atmosphere of some brainstorming methodologies can be very disconcerting to some otherwise highly creative members of your team.

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Woodrow WilsonYou are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Woodrow Wilson
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Overlooking “Capability”  for “Like-ability” 

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Capable - Likeable

One of the biggest problem that I see in many organizations is our willingness to overlook “capability” for “like-ability.”

What does that mean?

It means that many times we are more interested in whether or not our leader is “like-able” and less interested in whether or not they are actually capable of exhibiting and demonstrating leadership.  This can have tragic affects

This phenomenon is not as common in the commercial world.  The business world often cares much more about whether or not you can do the job than whether or not you can be a leader.  There is not often much thought given to how the rest of the employees “feel” about the boss or the leader.

Here is where we see leaders who have progressed through the ranks of an organization and have reached a leadership level through hard work, dedication and a proven track record of success.  They have been mentored by other leaders who have proven track records of success.  They sometimes just aren’t that like-able.  And they often don’t particularly care if they are liked.

To back that premise up, research shows that average Emotional Intelligence scores plummet higher up the corporate ladder beyond the supervisor level. The theory is that people get promoted based upon results, even if their people skills are lacking. As leadership coaches, folks like me are working desperately to change that. But the phenomenon remains.

And I suppose all of this begs a few questions:

  1. Would a leader rather be liked or trusted?
  2. Would a leader rather be popular or right?
  3. Would a leader rather be successful or loved?
  4. Is “like-ability” even something that a leader should be concerned about?

There are so many angles that this thought process could take.

What if . . .

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Strategic Leadership’s Distinct Roles

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Distinct Roles

I have spent a great deal of time in my last few articles camping out on the subject of strategic leadership.  We have examined the ancient roots of it.  We have also looked at the circle of leadership.

In this article I want to bring the topic to a close and look at some of the distinctive roles that strategic leaders must fulfill.  Consider if you will these seven distinct roles for strategic leaders.

Providing Direction — The word “leadership” derives from an Anglo-Saxon word, laed, which means “road, path, track or the course of a ship at sea.” Leaders provide the directional guidance for their followers.  Further, they ensure that everyone is moving the the proper direction.  Just moving is not enough.  We must be moving in the right direction.

Thinking and Planning — Strategic leaders decide the direction through strategic thinking and planning. They go on to develop the best strategy to guide your processes, and then they implement it. Thinking and planning without an ability to execute is ultimately worthless.

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Pat Riley

To have long-term success as a coach or in any position of leadership, you have to be obsessed in some way.

Pat Riley
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Motivation and the Greater Good

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Motivation and the Greater Good

I want to take a moment to examine the heart, character, inner thoughts and motives of one who desires to lead. This is a helpful practice that we each ought to engage in on a regular basis. Without self-examination, accountability and attention to moral development even the best of leaders will slowly drift and become overtaken by the allure of power, pleasure, greed and self-satisfying behaviors.

At the heart of every leadership attitude and behavior should be the inherent desire to help our fellow humans. Leadership is not some kind of encapsulated behavior that gets things done without human interaction or personal influence. Instead leadership is with and for people. Leadership is for the purpose of getting something done (for the purpose of the greater good of humanity) or for the purpose of shaping and influencing someone (for the purpose of the greater good of that person). And so we must examine our own hearts.

leadership is with and for people

Why do I lead?

Much of the time we lead others because it is part of our job description. In some way, shape or form our position requires us to “lead” a group of people in order to get a job done for the organization for which we work. However, if we begin digging down,

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Lead Yourself First!

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Bicycle - Lead Yourself First

I have found myself doing some internal reflection lately. I have figured out, that for me to be effective as a leader, I need to be able to lead myself. And, no I don’t mean this as another do as I do kind of article.

The truth is I have always wanted to help others, but I haven’t always made them a priority. I have always wanted to be a hard conscientious worker, but sometimes I let the wrong things take up the majority of my time. I have spent the last few weeks reflecting on some observations. I have done some research and I want to share some of my findings.

What I’ve learned is, that unless you’re able to lead yourself, you won’t be effective in leading others. You can certainly inspire them or you can entertain them, but to take them places they can’t go by themselves, they have to want to follow you. And like it or not, your example speaks louder than your words. Your example impacts your followers desire to follow you and it impacts the model of work that they adopt. My hard work begets hard work in those following me.

I like to compare leading yourself to riding a bicycle. To go anywhere, you have to remember four principles:

Kickstand principle:  You don’t go anywhere on a bicycle with your kickstand down. You have to kick it up and get on the bike. This is the only way to defeat the law of inertia. Leaders have to have purpose to get going. The have to put themselves in motion.  So many people are waiting for God to tell them what to do. God is usually waiting for us to look at what he already told us to do and start doing something, anything.

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