Trying to be proactive instead of reactive.
So I was on Twitter a month ago and ran into a song of a mixtape by someone in my fraternity called “
“Ten Greek Commandments” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx8isYGpZo4) from Thousand Miles From Nowhere (http://www.icommunication-ct.com/zen/). <He actually is really good>
It a short remake of the The Notorious B.I.G. – Ten Crack Commandments (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihPOTDxMfE). Who I think is the Greatest rapper of all time.
Anyway, it got me thinking some about leadership and what rules I would give ( based on both my successes and defeats see rule #10) to someone that asked me what would be best to do.
Now these are my “rules”, but I don’t claim to follow all of them. Nor to I claim to be an expert on leadership or a truly “great” leader in any way. I just like looking at stuff like this for fun. Also, I don’t think any of this (at least very little of this is originally mine). Believe it or not my best talents are finding things, putting them together, and communicating them in away that can be best understood. I leave discovering “new” ideas in the midst of all this history to someone else.
But, if you will. Read. Review. Criticize. Enjoy. Tell me what you think.
Or…give me 10 of your won..on this or something else…
I’m out..
“Ten Leadership Commandments”
1. You can’t be a leader if you don’t lead.
This may seem obvious, but a prerequisite for leadership is the ability to organize and move people toward someplace. This means you have to be able to inspire people to be better than they think they are. You have to be able to convince people that what they think is only the incomplete version of what you think. You have to be able to have the courage of your convictions at all times. You can’t be stubborn, nor can you be too easily influenced. It’s kind of simple, but you can’t be a leader if you have no skills which say you can lead.
2. Never ask someone to do something you are not willing to do yourself.
This is the basic blueprint of being a leader. Leadership is not about telling people what to do. It’s about identifying the best people to work with. It is about assigning tasks that those people can do using their skills and talents to both help whatever the cause is and help themselves grow at the same time. The best leaders never give orders they wouldn’t be ready to carry out themselves if the person they give the order to decides not to do it. They also don’t try to micromanage things they know nothing about. Never ask someone else to do something you are not willing or able to do yourself.
3. Patience is a Virtue
You always have more time than you think you do. The problem is a lot of us waste time, and wonder only after why we always want more time. Time is a precious commodity, and patience is its bodyguard. Leaders often have high expectations, but they also realize that all regret is based on expectations. In order to lead you must have an endless amount of patience. You can’t get anxious or become rash. You have to be able to wait and let things develop. Patience is always key. Leadership is a marathon, never a sprint. It’s a slow cooked meal, not a microwave dish. The best leaders can rise above any situation, and see the bigger picture. Focus over long periods of time and endurance under difficult circumstances are the building blocks of leadership.
4. Leadership is all about sacrifice
If you are not willing to give (or not in a position that allows you to give freely of yourself), you may not be ready to lead. You should judge what you have by what you have given up to get it, not by what it gives you after you have it. Leadership is about what you can’t do because of what you have given to those you are leading. It should not be about what you can do because of what your followers have given to you. Some of the best leaders are known for what they didn’t do, not what they did do.
5. Leadership is Service
Leadership is organizing a group of people to achieve a common goal. You do this as a benefit to the group you are helping organize. Therefore, leadership is a service. It’s never about you if you are a leader. It’s always about the people you are leading. The people you serve. The best leaders realize that the group does not need them as much as the group grows to think they do. The best leaders also realize that the group does not need them as much as they need the group. They say a leader without followers is just someone going out for a walk. Leadership is giving to others just for the sake of giving; few people can do that, which is why few people can lead.
6. Leaders don’t fit in, they stand out
You should never have to go to an organization’s meeting (or conference, or a public forum, etc) and have to ask who the leader is. It should be clear who is “in charge” because; Leaders always stand out from the crowd. Don’t try to be a leader if you want to be “normal”. Don’t try and be a leader if you have an overwhelming desire to do what everyone else is doing. There are people who a superior supporters that could be great leaders, but they know that they don’t want the responsibility of being out in front on everything. In contrast, they are a lot of followers that will never be anything more than “a leader in name alone” because they insist on always being part of the group, rather than provide the group direction. The risk of leadership is that when things go right you get some of the credit, and when things go wrong you must take all of the blame. It is what it is. But if you are never willing to stand alone, you are not willing to lead.
7. Keep your personal and you professional separated
To quote the rapper of my inspiration, this rule is truly underrated. You can not lead if your emotions are pre-compromised, and unbiased decisions are sometimes (not always but the majority of the time) poor decisions. You have to be fair and equitable to lead, cause if you are not your followers are not going to trust you. Trust is to leadership as water is to a tree. So keep what is personal away from what is business, and keep what is business separated from that which is personal. It will make leading a lot easier.
8. Availability is your best ability
You can’t lead anything if you are not around enough to lead. If you are going to lead, those that will follow you need to have almost unlimited access to you to be lead by you. You need to be available not just to make decisions, but to inspire your followers to get jobs done. If you are leading your organization you are your organizations best asset, and no one goes into battle without their number one weapon. Leadership requires major time and concentration, distractions can cause delays. Conflict is more often lost by indecision, than by wrong decisions.
9. You will be defined more by the results of your followers, than success of your leadership
The most difficult decisions made by those that are leading are those decisions in which there are no way to tell if you were right or wrong until well after the decision was made. Many things look good and turn out to be rotten. Even more things look bad and turn out to be the right decision all along. Therefore, when you lead you will be judged more by the by products of your decisions than the immediate results when you make them. Sustainability is a major stress reducer. Starting from scratch is often a waste of massive time. So, you will also be judged on if those that followed you continued to do the things that you lead them to do after you stop leading.
10. You will learn more from your defeats, than your victories
Your failures teach you more than your successes will, because you learn what not to do when you fail at a task. All you usually learn from a win is what you thought you knew in the first place. I hope that everyone that makes decisions think they are right when they make them. So having you “rightness” confirmed really doesn’t do much. But the more mistakes that are made and learned from in the past, the better informed your decisions in the future will be. Making you a better leader. Remember, the risk of leadership is that when things go right you get some of the credit, but when things go wrong you must take all of the blame. Don’t be so afraid of being wrong, that you keep yourself from ever being right. Don’t make decisions out of fear, make them from the prior knowledge you have gained and learned.
