Goals, productivity, and teams. What could be the secret ingredient that binds these three? We admire those that inspire. And nothing inspires us more than the pursuit of greatness. Tenacity. Resilience. The ability to keep going, no matter what. And it is people like these that we want to lead us. It’s no surprise that we tend to follow those who persevere.
Posts Tagged Under: leader
Leaders or managers, this is the problem. While managers can be leaders, the reverse is not a must. In fact, these two roles are often separate. After all, modern businesses seem to prefer it this way. While leaders lead, managers manage.
On the other hand, every organization strives for success. Hence, any team wants to achieve, above and beyond. However, most often, management does not have a leadership role. In fact, management often deals with quality control and compliance. Also, they exercise control and offer accountability. Modern managers do all sorts of things, yet effective leadership seems to not be on the list.
Micro-goals are a novel concept in strategy. They allow a tactical segmentation of organizational plans. In a sense, it’s like re-creating your organization at a micro-scale.
Micro-goals are a way for your organization to learn. You use them to determine what outcomes are achievable by a small, very special, task force. Then you measure the progress of such a team and learn as much as you can.
Learning for the entire duration of your life might sound crazy. Who would choose to forever go to school? In fact, people think that life starts after school. Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. Lifelong learning has little to do with schooling. It has, however, a lot to do with living.
And to a great extent, a healthy, meaningful life is more than memories and great experiences. Rather, a meaningful life is full of lessons and learning. Either lessons that you learn, or lessons that you teach.
Every manager and entrepreneur dreams of becoming an inspiring leader that people would gladly follow. Some people have a natural leadership instinct, but what if you weren’t born with such exceptional skills? Can you learn how to be inspiring to others?
Science says there are ways you can train yourself so that people listen to you and follow your lead. Here’s what I found to be useful for anyone willing to go on this journey of inspiring leadership.
Photo by Eugene Lim on Unsplash
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
Passionate leaders see life as a mission. So they go above and beyond to fulfill it. They walk their talk, they convey their beliefs without dismissing others, and they stay committed when times are hard. But most of all, they don’t settle. To be able to say that your work is your life and you wouldn’t change it for the world, now that’s self-fulfillment!
Mentality wise, the differences between people who live paycheck to paycheck and those who run their own successful business are vast. For one thing, the former group leads a life of pressure where stress is the norm. They see the world as a jungle that rewards only the fittest, a race to a safe heaven that will hopefully occur before retirement. The latter group worries too, but about different things. Like failing to change the world
Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash
Leadership is a quality, a distinction. It’s something you’re either good at or you’re not. There’s no exact recipe for being a leader. In business, for instance, it’s good for the CEO to have charisma. Because the CEO is often the face of the company. But you can do without a charming personality and still make a truckload of cash if you have your game on. Attractiveness is a plus, but certainly not a requirement.
In sales, it pays to be convincing. Some convince through body language, others with their tone of voice. Master none and you can still sell if you dot the “i” with strong arguments. In sales, it doesn’t matter how you get there, as long as you get there.
Of the thousands of remarks attributed to the late Steve Jobs, nearly all of them deliver pretty much the same message: listen to your heart! This excerpt from his famous speech at Stanford University in 2005 is no different. However, this one has more than a single lesson embedded in it.