Establishing a Leadership Team from Within

Many companies get to a point where you have to have some lieutenants to help forward the mission.  So you corral your top talent, real stars who get it, care about the mission and yet, have been taught little, if any, leadership skills.  Maybe a couple of them served our great country through one of the armed forces, maybe one was the captain of the football team or the majorette in charge of the drill team in college.  But overall, we all grow up, refrain, most of us grow up having to learn leadership from in front of the keyboard, becoming a student teacher, which from what I gather is like the band scene in the movie “Roadhouse” where the crowd was throwing stuff at the band  or peering out of the windshield of a service vehicle.

First step, get your core together and ask them what is it they want from a leadership position?  Most of the front line assassins simply do not know.  It isn’t that they do not want to help, it is simply that many people do not know what leadership looks like, sounds like or moreover, feels like to be sure.  Once you get them circled up, it does get easier, for me, we start simple and depending on your group, ours are mid-thirties with a wife/husband and two kids on average.  The amount of time that they can spend on personal development can be impaired fairly significantly until the kids are of a functional age and that the spouse of said employee or team member realizes that the effort by their partner may well indeed pay off later in life.  Learn how to deal with the DIMK’s (Dual Income Multiple Kid’s) group, they make up our future and current leaders.

As a male, I can attest to the fact that we on average do not mentally mature until we are in our mid thirties or at least 74.5% of us.  That isn’t a bad thing, it just is, deal with it, pace yourself, your expectations and work through it.  As a male doing what I can to serve the female members of our team, they do get it much faster, they also tend to have many more responsibilities than their hairier spouses, it all will come in time.  Just keep the faith, keep the energy flowing and work on your on expectations as to what you can expect from this next generation of EXCELLENT leaders you are shepherding.

Parting thought, Do Not Not Do This, It Is Important, We all need the next generation to be strong, keep the faith even on those days when you feel that ... whatever feeling.  

 

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Know when to do what

The Delicate Balance of Knowing when to Lead, Coach, Mentor or Parent

March 27, 2012

Do you ever find yourself in the weird space of trying to, instantaneously I may add, figure out which role you need to take on?  Maybe a young member of your team needs some guidance on a particular thing, now quickly, which hat to wear?

As we learn and as we learned when someone either taught us the right way or we figured out that what we were told was totally wrong, the guidance will most likely stay with you for a long while.  For me, some of the lessons are now 30 years old, I am 47.  Not just business lessons, but moral and “self-regard” lessons.  Lessons that you are proud that you learned along the way and that you want to bestow upon the person willing to heed good common-sense based advice without them thinking you are trying to navigate for them.  Delicate indeed.

We have all learned from others, watching, listening, mimicking, doing the complete opposite of what we saw, etc...  What are you displaying that others may need to know, see or hear?  Or not?

It is up to us, even if you consider yourself average or less than average, in regards to teaching, Just Do It.  The people you may influence, for the most part you may not even know you are influencing some of them, will keep those memories forever.  What are you delivering to the masses?  Would you be proud to have your kindergarten aged child see what you are doing over the course of the day ... the night?  This thought scares me from where I have been to in some of my younger years!

My motto:  I am a work in progress.  Never satisfied with my delivery, always working on my content and the proper way to introduce my mission of EXCELLENCE to others.