Want to Be a Great Leader? Get Over Yourself
One of the facts of leadership is that the buck, ultimately, stops with you. That’s right; when you wear the mantle of leadership you assume the ultimate responsibility of many things. In light of this, it can be easy to hoard responsibilities and tasks, forgetting the importance of the team alongside you. Really effective leaders, however, know that while the buck stops with them, true success requires the efforts of everyone.
In order to be the best leader you possibly can, you’ve got to remember that leaders are only recognizable as such if they have followers. And the only way to have followers is to see yourself as one of them, even as you recognize your role as leader. It’s a bit of a balancing act, to be sure. As a leader you need to enlist the support of your followers, asking them to help the cause in ways that maximize their individual strengths even while their help supports your vision. In other words, you’ve got to be able to put aside the idea that you are the be-all and end-all of you mission, and recognize that the people around you are who will ultimately guarantee the success of your plan — or not.
Bottom-line: great leaders have great followers, and enlist the support of those great followers at every turn. Real leaders know how to set their egos aside and ask for help. Real leaders make themselves part of the team instead of holding themselves apart. Want to be a great leader? Then you need to get over yourself.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gail Barker, Gail Barker. Gail Barker said: New Stellar CC blog post: Want to Be a Great Leader? Get Over Yourself: http://tinyurl.com/2wenl6p [...]