The best question you can ask... ever.

“What question should I be asking but haven’t?”

There are instances where a culture of “don’t ask; don’t tell” exists or people who hold information back for the perception of control and power but in general, with no malicious intent, most people operate under the simple contract of “asked and answered” — you get what you ask for.

Critical understanding is a result of asking questions, and particularly those questions you don’t know to ask — eventually you exhaust the questions that come innately to you so it’s imperative to surround yourself with people who ask the questions you didn’t think of — or better yet ask them what you should be asking.

In the same vein, another very good question is” What am I missing?” Just make sure you aren’t just talking to yourself.

iamgpe

A series on leadership — insight three

Recently I thought I had reached a level of wisdom that I could offer thoughts on a number of things in a blog; one of which was Leadership. In my brief overview on the topic, I said this:

Leadership is defined when times are difficult: with vision, decision making, and ownership. This applies to character for that matter.

It struck me that maybe it was impossible to define leadership in a single sentence, and even if I did accurately hit on the three key elements, it’s obviously a very deep subject which warrants more than a sentence. With this in mind, and the need to explore a very important topic further, I thought I’d share some insights from those leaders I have known over the years. I suspect most will fall into what I’ve pointed out as decision making, with vision and ownership being figurative bookends. As I make my way, hopefully I will find something I didn’t pay enough attention to — a reminder that reflection is a powerful tool.

insight three

Question:

I'm currently thinking a lot about the topic of leadership and there are one or maybe two questions in this context that I'm not really getting anywhere with. Since you are writing on this topic in your blog, I thought I would write you and ask you the two questions that are currently bothering me:

1) How do I find out if I am a leader, or if I have the potential to be one? (And here I explicitly mean leader as opposed to boss).

2) How do I find out if I can handle the responsibility that a leader has? And I don't mean responsibility in the sense of personnel responsibility here, but the responsibility to make the world (somewhat) better as a leader.

… maybe your thoughts are suitable for a blog post. Because I think others might have these questions too.

Reply:

Ok, I've spent some time thinking about this so I can offer something constructive...

First of all you can accomplish anything you want, and remember everything (including leadership) is a journey — and as you know, that's where you actually learn something. So definitely don't talk yourself out of taking any opportunity and jump all over what is being offered.

I think it may be better to not look at "Leadership” as a binary thing: I am a leader/I am not a leader, but more as a spectrum of bad to great (and you don't even need a title)... you are actually a leader right now. I think the question is how do I become a great leader that will make a difference? Two general considerations come to mind... 1) you need to be at a level that you can influence organizational change and 2) rally people (direct and indirect) around your vision/plan and get them to make it happen. A leaders job isn't to do it but rather rally others to do it.

Although if you are really good you don't need #1 but it makes it easier for sure; check out the book The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma (https://youtu.be/gqvmd8j6v9M )

If you want any career advancement and ability to lead change, you need people management experience because the only way to get it is to do it... you need the experience of hiring, developing, promoting and terminating just to develop a baseline (in bad times is preferable). It is the only try way to determine if you want to manage teams or would rather be an individual contributor.

The legacy of a good/great leader is in the people they touch and the teams they develop — that's how you change the world; one person at a time. I always took the philosophy that I will try to help a person take my job because my thinking was if I could do that, then I was doing my job.

My advice would be to signal to your boss you are excited about the opportunity and want to go for it — and then become a sponge on the topic of "leadership" (read, courses, a mentor). Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

I like Simon Sinek... a bit of a thought leader https://youtu.be/UZTyvbmW92M

I hope this has helped, and as I say, I would go for it and enjoy the ride.

I received a heart felt reply. It struck me afterward that I had forgotten something; I will follow up on my initial reply but I think it’s so important I will share — “Great Leadership is as much a Philosophy as it is a Journey”

iamgpe

PS: with regards to the original question it has been edited to remove sections to respect privacy, and my response has been edited slightly to correct bad grammar and punctuation.

image: anna-samoylova-unsplash

A series on leadership — insight two

Recently I thought I had reached a level of wisdom that I could offer thoughts on a number of things in a blog; one of which was Leadership. In my brief overview on the topic, I said this:

Leadership is defined when times are difficult: with vision, decision making, and ownership. This applies to character for that matter.

It struck me that maybe it was impossible to define leadership in a single sentence, and even if I did accurately hit on the three key elements, it’s obviously a very deep subject which warrants more than a sentence. With this in mind, and the need to explore a very important topic further, I thought I’d share some insights from those leaders I have known over the years. I suspect most will fall into what I’ve pointed out as decision making, with vision and ownership being figurative bookends. As I make my way, hopefully I will find something I didn’t pay enough attention to — a reminder that reflection is a powerful tool.

insight two

I remember being informed the Chief Commercial Officer had decided to cut the marketing budget by fifty percent. When asked why the reduction was so drastic, the answer was to drive more innovative thinking and action — his thinking was having less money to work with would force different thinking and actions. There were other things going on at time that influenced his decision, but his point and decision was nonetheless valid.

In a discussion about goals and objectives I heard recently, a leader reenforced she was more interested in what was done opposed to what wasn’t done — the primary message was to drive action, review what was done and learn from it. It should be noted the only thing you learn from inaction is that nothing was done, and that isn’t much of a learning opportunity.

In both these examples, deciding to create an environment (and a culture) to drive action, measure it and learn from it, was the goal.

There is also another consideration to why action is an important indicator of leadership — action is something you can own and as mentioned, ownership is a key component of leadership; whereas inaction reflects nothing, and you can’t really own “nothing”.

ac·tion /ˈakSH(ə)n/ noun : the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim.

The definition of action itself does a pretty good job of suggesting the decision to drive action may be a crucial part of defining leadership.

iamgpe

PS — We all believe we’re making things happen and getting things done. It is important though to either spend some time with honest reflection or get honest feedback, and then ask the question, “Am I driving action or just keeping busy?”