Leadership-Part 1

Character

For those of you who wish to become true and talented team leaders, I’ll give you a synopsis of Chris Brady and Orin Woodward’s book; Launching a Leadership Revolution. Which is a must read if aspire to lead or just improve your current skills. It hit #1 on the Wall Street Journal Business Best Seller list in November - for good reason.

In this three part blog we will focus on Character, Tasks and Relationships.

Orin and Woodward write; Personal growth is first, because a leader’s ability to influence others stems from his or her personal abilities.

Personal growth is internal, taking place deep within the leader. Often, when people embark upon the journey of becoming leaders, they feel frustrated at a lack of external results to show for their efforts. But the process of becoming a leader starts with a lot of effort, which results in improvements the outside world cannot see. Only later will all the effort at personal growth and all the improvements show up in the form of external results. Stephen Covey Says, “Internal victories precede external victories.”

Let us take the building of a sky scraper as an example. The amount of time spent planning, drawing, engineering the systems along with permitting , the immense amount of effort involved as digging, pouring and assembling all take place before any results become visible. Once the main construction begins, the height of the structure begins at an unbelievable speed. What was once an empty lot is suddenly transformed into an enormous structure. Personal ability and leadership characteristics work the same way.

Because personal growth is internal, the external results only show up much later. Using the example below will be helpful in tracking and understanding your growth with 10 being perfect and 0 being dismal. An example would be if you score well an 8 in Character and only a 1 in Tasks, 7 in Relationship 8X1X7=56, scoring well in all categories gives you a much different score 8X8X7=448. To be an effective leader you must score well in all 3 categories if you are weak in any of these 3 areas it drastically affects your effectiveness as a leader.

What’s being discussed in part 1 is character and the concept of honor. This cannot be emphasized too much: Anyone lacking character will not succeed in a meaningful way.

During your leadership development journey, understand that there is intrinsic value in developing character even if you never obtain external results. This is because who one becomes is more important than what one accomplishes
For the purpose of using the Leadership Ledger and gauging personal growth, character in this case is considered to include:
1. honesty
2. integrity
3. courage
4. proper values based on absolute truths
5. faith
6. a humble spirit
7. patience with others
8. discipline
9. self-mastery
The real influential leaders are the ones who devote themselves to personal discipline and make the most of their personal gifts. That is what this category of personal effectiveness is all about. John MacArthur observes, “Self control is absolutely vital to lasting success in any endeavor of life.”
Stay tuned for part 2