What It Means To Lead
LEADERSHIP
How do you get folks to work together to be the best they can, and be happy, engaged, excited, driven, passionate about what they are doing? Well its most likely a combination of things, but in my mind it all starts with the leader. Leaders set the stage. If you show up, others will. If you go out of your way to support someone, folks will support others. Folks look to the leader as examples of how they should act and get work done. But its also much more than that. Its how you hold folks accountable or let folks know they did a good job. What does leadership actually mean? Well a quick google search on the definition of leader pulls up all different kinds of definitions. In my mind it’s really hard to define it, its one of those things that you know it when you see it, i guess.
I first became interested in leadership when I took my first NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) course. My NOLS course was a 2 week sea kayaking in Patagonia, Chile. We learned the importance of having good leaders for any expedition and a lot of the lessons we learned can apply to the business world. I have since then read many books and listen to many podcast on the topic and have become fascinated with how folks approach leadership. Here are some stories and ideas that I think show leadership.
Thinking errors
My brother Tommy is a therapist and a really good one, though i might be biased because he is family. Either way, he always is talking about thinking errors. Thinking erriors are when you have a thought that is off or you are thinking for someone else. A classic example of this is when you are driving and someone cuts you off. If you think dang this guy is a jerk for doing that, he only cares about himself. You have no idea if that guy is actually a jerk, and maybe he cut you off because he was in a rush to get to the hospital or some family emergency. Who knows. Anyways i bring this up because i think that coming up with values and a vision that can also reduce thinking errors will make for stronger teams.
You see this kind of thing at work all the time. I am just going to make up some names here for an example. If Jack is working on some water proofing details and Sara comes up to him and says “why are you doing it that way” Jack might think, she is asking me that because she thinks i am an idiot. If your firm has a value that we are here to all grow together, then Jack might atomaticlly think wait part of our values are that we grow together, maybe she is asking me to learn from what i am doing. These types of things happen all the time at the office and i think thats why its important to have a good set of values.
For example if i have a value that says something like. We are mentors and help each other g