Great leadership in 22 simple words

HUMILITY

Leadership is not about me but about stewarding a trust on behalf of others and a mission that makes the world a better place,

SERVICE

Leadership is always about service: to those we lead; to those we serve through our organization; and to those that the organization interacts with.

INTEGRITY

Leaders model high standards of integrity and live with accountability as they expect the same from others in the organization. 

VISION

The ability to see the future and what could be is the mark of a great leader. Vision always believes there is a better way and a better future.

IMPLEMENTATION

Vision without a strategy is an illusion. Leaders are able to take concrete steps toward their vision on an ongoing basis.

CLARITY

The best leaders are able to articulate the mission of the organization with crystal clarity, build alignment around that clarity and ensure that the main thing is kept the main thing all the time.

RESULTS

Leadership should always have results that are consistent with organizational mission and clarity. Great leaders always keep the missional agenda of the organization front and center and can measure results and progress with precision.

ENCOURAGEMENT

Leaders lift others up and help them see what they can be and the contribution they can make. To be around a good leader is to be challenged to live up to one's potential.

EMPOWERMENT

Leaders give opportunity and authority away all the time. They don't control but empower within boundaries to the level appropriate for staff.

SELF AWARENESS

Leaders are life long students of themselves, how they are wired, who they need around them to be successful and how others perceive them. Good EQ is a priority for leaders. 

TEAM

Great leaders lead with and through others. They understand that there is wisdom in diversity of views and practice robust dialogue and cooperation.

RESPECT

Leaders always treat others with respect and dignity regardless of the situation. They set the standard for how individuals are valued in their organization.

  RESOLVE

Leaders are undeterred by barriers or problems. They will find a way around, over, under or through any barrier to achieve the mission.

RESILIENCE

Leaders must make choices that make others unhappy. They are not deterred by criticism or personal attacks but display remarkable resilience in the face of opposition.

CONTRARIAN

Leaders understand that conventional wisdom is often conventional and often not wisdom. Thinking like a contrarian helps uncover novel and new solutions to old problems.

LEARNING

Leaders are learners. They ask great and frequent questions, listen carefully and are naturally inquisitive. This posture provides them with unusual insight.

THINKERS

Thinking time is a standard part of a leader's life and schedule. They understand that busyness is not the goal but wise solutions and strategies. Thinking time is a high priority.

SIMPLICITY

Leaders are able to take complex issues and frame them in simple and understandable ways. They know that business is complex, complexity is confusing and their job is to simplify complexity.

REALITY

Leaders are always looking under the shiny hood to see what is really there. They value reality over rose colored glasses. They know that you cannot advance if you don't acknowledge what is actually present.

TRANSFORMATION

The best leaders are transformational in their leadership. They want to see individuals become who they were meant to be, a culture that is healthy and vibrant and an organization that brings transformation to their constituency.

MENTOR/COACH

Developing the current and future leaders of the organization is a high priority and time commitment of good leaders. They want to leave the organization  stronger and better when they leave and that is dependent on their coaching and mentoring of others. 

CULTURE

Good leaders do not settle for the culture that is but handcraft a culture that will help individuals flourish and ensure that the culture will help the organization reach its mission. They guard the values and commitments of culture rigorously.

The Law of Limiting Constraints

Every new strategy should be tested against the law of limiting constraints. Limiting constraints are the things that will prevent your idea or strategy from being as successful as you desire it to be. They are issues that become constraints to what you wish would happen but the constraint becomes a barrier. If, however, you can identify those probable constraints ahead of time and make necessary modifications to mitigate them, your strategy is likely to be more successful than it would have been.

I once led an international mission agency that was seeing too many unqualified personnel being sent to the field in spite of having a well honed system for vetting prospective missionaries. As we looked at the systems we discovered two limiting constraints that were preventing us from achieving better outcomes.

The first of these constraints was philosophical and the second was in the testing and interviewing we did. It is well known that mission agencies have a history of overlooking issues that candidates have since one of their main indicators of success is their total number of missionaries. Unless this metric could be changed from the numbers of missionaries to the emotional, spiritual, EQ, relational and skill health of prospective staff we would continue to get the results that were less than satisfactory. This required us to change our definitions of success for the recruiting department. The wrong metric was a limiting constraint.

The other limiting constraint was that we used ineffective testing materials and had the wrong people interviewing prospective staff. Bad information in, bad information out. We ended up shutting down our intake process for six months so we could build it from the ground up. Had we not dealt with these two limiting constraints we would not have solved our problems.

In both designing new strategies and evaluating current ones, take the time to ask what the potential or current constraints are that keep you from being more successful than you are. Then do the hard work of figuring out how you can remove those constraints from your system. Constraints are barriers to success. The more you can identify and remove those barriers the better off you will be.