Our eight-year old son just started his Little League season and I offered to help coach. We also recently welcomed a female Chesapeake puppy to our family. Both of these situations have offered great reminders of three effective leadership principles:
1. Create the vision.
- Clarity of purpose is essential. Your vision of success must be the driving factor in leading your team.
- Without a clear “destination” people cannot effectively work to support end results.
- Vision should be bold. Old business school saying- BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals).
2. Focus the action.
- Structure and direction are key responsibilities of leaders, not just managers.
- Focus must connect people’s work (actions) to the vision of success
- Structure should not stifle creativity and risk-taking.
- Unless people know the parameters within which they can work, effort will be scattered and unproductive.
- Keep people focused on the right things and redirect attention as often as necessary.
3. Reinforce positive behavior.
- Reward effort, engagement, support, hard work, and results.
- Praise first (publicly) and correct second (privately).
- Celebrate and share success (within team and more broadly).
Simple leadership lessons surround us daily. We live and breath good and bad examples. Tuning in to situations, in the moment, will help us recognize our own opportunities for improving our own leadership… whether it’s within our organization, our children’s sports teams or even our own families.
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