Let’s Talk About Leadership:

THE BOTTOM LINE: You want to be the best leader you can be all the time because your people rely on you all the time.

I always hated my job when I worked in places where I had to hope my boss was in a good mood. I thought to myself, “I hope she is in an okay mood today because I have to ask her for something.” No lower-level organization member should have to worry about the mental state of the boss at work – the job is hard enough.

So . . . make it a goal to be a leader you would follow every day. There are three main reasons why:

1. Your people rely on you every day.

2. If you are going to take on a role (like being a leader) you might as well be good at it.

3. The world needs more GOOD leaders in the character and values sense – more on this in Tip #3.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Values-based leadership is a lost art that we must recover as a society. 

Character should drive all of your leadership decisions. There are other considerations, to be sure. But a values-based approach to running your organization will lead to higher morale which should then lead to more success, higher profits, better retention, increased productivity, and more.

Leading from values is usually hard and often seems contradictory to your best interests. For example, it focuses you to take attention off of yourself and consider others. Few leaders like to do that. It forces you to treat people as having intrinsic worth as opposed to a cog in the machine that can be tossed aside when no longer needed. It forces you to consider what it means to be loyal and to stand up for people even when your interests are not directly parallel. This type of leadership is hard. And, that is why it’s so rare. Set a leadership goal to make all of your organization and personal decisions based on your character first. Other reasons surely matter, just not as much.

THE BOTTOM LINE: there are many really good leadership training opportunities out there. But, in and of themselves, they are useless. You first have to believe in your heart that being an ethical leader matters.

Opportunities for leadership training are ubiquitous. They are all over the internet and prominent in universities across the land. And, some are very good – for what they are worth. The problem is that too few focus on the ethical aspects of leadership. Instead they focus on effort, leaning in, crisis management, following a vision, etc. These are great traits of excellent leaders. However, if leaders do not care about character then they will not care about these things much either.

Think about it – if you don’t care about being loyal, then your crisis management approach is unlikely to benefit people outside of yourself and close allies. If you aren’t compassionate, then your efforts to lean in to your culture will ring hollow. Make it a leadership goal to focus on your character first and then take leadership classes.

Corey’s program evaluates what it means to:

1. Follow Aristotle’s Golden Mean in your organization – in other words, to find the perfect balance of virtues like honesty, courage, and compassion within your culture.

2. Possess an others-outlook as a leader. How can leaders look beyond their needs and desires to the needs and desires of the rest of the team? Even the people at the lowest career levels of the organization.

3. Own mistakes even if you didn’t make them or when ownership conflicts with your agenda.

4. Lead by following your moral duty to avoid taking exceptions for yourself that you would not be willing to grant to others.

5. And much more . . .

Click the “BE A LEADER YOU WOULD FOLLOW” link below for more information.