It is incredible how this universe works. Within a team are people with specific unique abilities, each of which is to be appreciated and respected. A coherent team has a leader who not only has the experience of time and what they have lived, yet also the uncanny ability to see within their team members and lead them to greatness. In fact, it is said that a leader’s ability to make herself/himself obsolete is the ultimate bar by which to judge their success.
Youth is great for its energy and eyes-wide-open facility to see things that others may have stopped dreaming of. Age is great for its experiences and strength of wisdom. Combine the two and you should have a skill set which will lead to greatness in leadership, which is usually the precursor to a team’s success in its mission.
Often, people confuse title for leadership. Nothing can be farther than the truth. If you are using your title to convey upon yourself a sense of importance, then ego is ruling, and you will be dethroned if not from within, then later by market forces that expose you as such. Rather it is by your actions and your ability to lead each and every part of your team that you will prove yourself worthy of the title. And if the true success of your stay in any leadership position is to hand off a company, organization or otherwise to another, as each goes through different stages and requires new skill sets, then the choices will make themselves evident at the right time. Have you evolved sufficiently to take on the next stage or is there someone better positioned to lead the team at that moment?
Leaders with sufficient self-esteem will take their teams to success. Leaders with too much ego will fail in that mission. So if you are trying to gain the confidence of your team, ask yourself about the place from where you come…is it about you…or is it about them?
I recently became involved in a company where the “CEO” chose to put his name front and centre on a website, despite having no value to his team. If he was Steve Jobs, I’d be BEGGING him to put his name on the front of the website! Yet in this case, I asked him to remove it. When you are leading a team…consider these words of Lao Tze in a previous blog entry which I had written years ago. We all learn from our experiences, and while this particular CEO may feel that I was kicking him in the ass while others choose to pat him on the back, what he may not realize just yet, is that both are necessary to help form a good leader…and in fact a nice pat on the back is always only a few inches from a good kick in the ass…
One of the leaders whom I have come to respect in my life is the current Sunlogics CEO, Mike Matvieshen. His guidance is always meant to uplift and find ways to create wealth together for all of the stakeholders involved in any entity he leads. I believe that he has put together a team, a structure and an offering for our customers that will elevate our game and demand of each of us that we elevate our own. I am proud to be a part of his new team and look forward to great success in our common quest.
I come to this particular place with the humility to know that my words were not always followed by the actions required to deliver on them. I guess part of growing up is how the universe teaches the lessons when we fail to do so and how we accept those lessons as necessary to our path.
Sass