Formula To Be An Effective Leader
Today’s message will cross two books I am currently reading, Bold and Broken, and, Leading with Your Life Equation: How to be Indestructible, Indispensable & Unstoppable by Philip Jalufka. I don’t always read more than one book simultaneously, but I made Jalufka’s book a priority because he is speaking at an event I am hosting next week, and it’s important to me to have finished his book by then.
Bold and Broken Takeaways:
Leaders are the guardrails on the path to success for your company. There is a path that is easy to walk – it’s paved, clear, straight; and as you get toward the edges of that path, you could fall down a cliff to total destruction. When you are on that path, you can move more quickly and effectively. Leaders are equipped with the ability and responsibility to notice when a member of their team, or their company trajectory at large, may be starting to slip off of the clear path. Leaders are always that guardrail – they are the ones that are supposed to look out for the team, and keep them from falling to their demise, and bring them back onto the path forward.
From my time in the military, I learned a straight-forward formula for how to introspectively reflect on your leadership when you start to notice anyone – or the team at large – heading in the direction of moving off the path.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
First, is more training required?
Second, have you given them the proper resources to succeed and stay on the path to success?
Third, have you motivated the team sufficiently to stay on the path to success? Be sure to consider their individual and personal motivations.
Finally, have you given them what they need to stay focused on the company goals?
If you haven’t done all four of these things sufficiently, you need to go back to do each of these with the individuals starting to fall off the path. Ultimately, this is going to be a learning experience for you as a leader to sit with the reasons why someone fell off the path, and ask yourself how you can grow and get better from this.
Leading with Your Life Equation Takeaways:
Author Jalufka gives the following equation:
Lesson Learned – The Mistake = Experience
As a young leader, reaching for growth opportunities, I was always looking for experience. I would sit with my failures or lessons learned from my on-the-job training, or, I was just hungry to read books. I would read books with the intent to gain from someone else’s experience, which is a less painful way to learn lessons to fuel leadership growth. As I have gotten older, I understand that experience is great, but if you can furthermore use that experience to gather wisdom, you will become the ultimate leader. For me, personally, I’ve formulated the following equation for generating wisdom:
Your Experience + Spiritual Context = Wisdom
Wisdom is the ultimate growth opportunity for any leader. I challenge you to take all of these lessons learned that give you experience and add in some spiritual context to give you wisdom. Use that wisdom as a superpower to fuel the growth of the people for whom you are responsible and for your company at large.