The "being" leadership story

Sudden changes in the industry can disrupt the status quo, potentially derailing the success of your organization. In these situations a leader must remain flexible and adaptable, ready to make the quick decisions that can keep the company on track with minimal negative impact.

Putting speed and innovation ahead of tried-and-tested business practices often makes leaders cautious. However, in a fast-changing world, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

For a start-up, the risks can be even greater but innovation is impossible without risk. And if you can’t take risks, you may not be cut out to be a digital leader.

Relationships with supervisors can be powerful motivators.

Enough personal information as to make yourself seem more relatable provided at an appropriate time might just be the key to a future successful career.

Introducing yourself as the new leader of a team can be pretty challenging, as people will want to know more about yourself as well as about your plans in regards to the future of the company.

Explain patiently why you chose this path and how you plan on improving the chosen department. Employees also appreciate it when you explain why your new position is integral to your story and, most important, how your direct reports play a critical role in that story.

5 phases that take place as a leader’s charisma shifts from a positive to a negative quality:

• The first phase is characterized by the subtle sense on the part of followers that the leader does not want to be questioned.
• The second stage: sensing the leader's diminished appetite for being questioned or challenged, followers begin to self-censor, asking fewer questions and no longer playing devil's advocate.
• The third stage: a negative cycle in which compliments and agreement cause leaders to become overconfident. Leaders in this stage create their own sense of reality and become resistant to evidence that they may be incorrect.
• The fourth stage: Since the leader's views and actions are the only ones that matter, followers reduce their willingness to be proactive. They wait for directions and become passive. Decision making slows down.
• The fifth stage is characterized by people continuing to follow and ostensibly do only what is necessary but with a deep diminishment in enthusiasm and spirit. 

As a leader, being reliable and responsible is important for your team. You stand a good chance in gaining the trust of your team if you show that you exercise caution, take calculated risks, and will hold to the organizational principles.

There is a degree of responsibility (and professionalism) that is expected from those in charge.
Trying to be the fun boss will harm your reputation eventually. It is good to keep some space between you and your team.

A growth mindset is a belief that anyone can change their talents, abilities, and intelligence. Those with a growth mindset:

• take on challenges
• take advantage of feedback
• use the most effective problem-solving strategies
• provide developmental feedback
• is persistent in accomplishing goals

Conversely, those with a fixed mindset believe that talents, abilities and intelligence can't be improved.

Leaders with a learning mindset are motivated to increase their competence and master something new.

A performance mindset desires to gain favorable judgments about competence and avoid negative judgements.

• In medieval times, leadership was mostly based on tradition. Most people never met their leaders and leadership was legitimized by the divine right of kings - charisma was not needed.
• The 19th and the 20th century were full of charismatic leaders. Technological (newspaper, radio, and TV) allowed leaders to transport their charisma over long distances.
• Our current globalized world and access to social media have led to another rise in charismatic leaders. On Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, many people support leaders solely based on their charisma.

Most of the dangers of the charismatic movement relate to this power.

• Charismatic leaders lose support more quickly than other types of leaders.
• They have to clearly be the best person for the job at hand – always and in any situation. This is why they often engage in a cult of personality and become resistant to criticism.
• Things that charismatic leaders do to maintain their power are precisely the things that diminish it when their business, country, or other undertaking encounters problems.
• When charismatic leaders use their position to motivate their followers to do things they would not normally do, the followers often feel betrayed once they suspect that they might not get the expected payoff. 
• They often eventually take the praise of their followers too seriously and show narcissistic traits. They consider criticism as disobedience and expect total loyalty. 

Martin Luther King is honored and revered today, but society didn't embrace him in his short life. Yet King knew his dream of equality was more important than popular opinion. He never accepted that just because things were a certain way, it made them right.

King worked towards disrupting the status quo to enable change.

A dream is only effective if you communicate it and do it.

Martin Luther King had a dream that he proclaimed across an audience of over 250,000 people. He couldn't be silent about it.

The authoritarian leadership style:

• The authoritarian style of leadership requires leaders to have total decision-making power and absolute control over their subordinates. Servant leadership upends the top-down power structure.

Similar leadership styles:

• Ethical leadership urges leaders to show respect for the values and dignity of their subordinates. Servant leadership's emphasis on taking responsibility for the needs and desires of others.
• Participative leadership style requires leaders to involve subordinates in setting goals, building teams and solving problems but keep the final decision-making in their own hands. Servant leadership includes some of these elements.

• Listening. A servant leader seeks to identify the will of a group and helps to clarify that will.
• Empathy. A servant leader assumes the good intentions of co-workers and does not reject them as people.
• Healing. Understand part of their leadership responsibility is to help make whole employees whose sense of self is precarious.
• Awareness.
• Persuasion. Servant leaders rely on persuasion not positional authority or coercion, to convince others.
• Conceptualization. Balancing between thinking big and managing everyday reality.
• Foresight. The ability to understand the past and see the present clearly to predict how the future will unfold.
• Stewardship. CEOs, staffs and trustees all have a responsibility to hold the institution "in trust" for the greater good of society.
• Commitment to the growth of people. Feel a responsibility to nurture the growth of employees.
• Building community. Find ways to build community in their institutions.

• Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their team members, even if their input would be useful.
• Democratic leaders make the final decisions, but they include team members in the decision-making process.
• Laissez-faire leaders give their team members a lot of freedom in how they do their work. They provide support with resources and advice if needed, but otherwise they don't get involved.

• With a people-oriented style, you focus on organizing, supporting, and developing your team members. This participatory style encourages good teamwork and creative collaboration.
• With task-oriented leadership, you focus on getting the job done. You define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, and plan, organize, and monitor work.

The best style to use is one that has both a high concern for people and a high concern for the task.

The voice of leadership, while not ignoring genuine threats, should sound positive and optimistic, believing you will succeed despite obstacles.

A cause is only lost when you believe it is, and even then, only when you give up. The task of leadership is to persevere until you achieve your goal, regardless of the difficulty. Communicate your optimism and transmit those beliefs to your team.

Fear causes people to freeze, take flight, or fight. It's not that leaders aren't afraid, but that they fear the greater danger of doing nothing.

Leaders speak to the real danger, that of leaving the threat unaddressed and unopposed. Courage means taking action and confronting the challenge directly, giving others the courage to do the same.