RIP Kobe.
Kobe Bryant was the only athlete to ever win a basketball championship and an Academy Award. He was also the first professional athlete who was not an actor to have his hand and footprints enshrined at Hollywood's historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
"The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” - Kobe Bryant
I invite you to reflect: Who has helped you become who you are? And now: Who will think of you in the same way?
Effective leadership is inspiration. A true leader does not impose commands from the outside, but inspires people to draw on their own deepest inner reserves. Much of leadership is about extracting that extra 5% of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.
Smart, clinical, sterile leadership doesn't inspire anybody, no matter how right they are. I keep my focus on people, not products, not sales. That is your #1 job as a leader.
You don't get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect. I can't think of any leader who succeeded for any length of time by presiding over a reign of terror. It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English Language are, "Well done.". People perform best when they know they have earned the trust of their leader.
Great teams are a collection of talented individuals, who need to be treated as individuals. When I was younger, I was more inclined to be severe. It was in those days that someone made a celebrated comment: "Paul treats us all alike. Like dogs!" Every associate is different, and I came to learn that they all required different care and feeding. Some would be at one extreme and need little help from me. This was particularly true of team members who had worked long with me, and understood me. With most team members, I did not have to urge them to increase their work rate or expend more energy, but there were a few, who needed that extra poke. I'm sure from time to time, I underestimated the degree of intimidation experienced by newer team members. I try to distinguish among my team, trying to learn everything possible about the emotional makeup and then use that knowledge to its best effect. I am now a psychologist more than a slave driver. Sales is a pressure business, and on my team I put on the most pressure. The point is that I've got to learn 17 ways to pressure 17 associates.
Part of the way to extract the most out of people is to show genuine loyalty when the rest of the world is baying for blood. Sales provides plenty of opportunities for a leader to show his support. There may be the times, when someone is significantly short of meeting sales targets . But more often than not, it is the little things - like helping associates improve their techniques. I was not doing these things because I was trying to emulate Mother Teresa, I was doing them because they would help the overall team performance but they had the side-effect of demonstrating to the team member that we had confidence in him or her. This instils loyalty; it also helped them to lift their game. And so, inadvertently, I gradually came to understand this back-door route to inspiring people.
I hope that what you've read here had provoked you to think about leadership in a new way. The journey to becoming a leader who inspires others is an inner journey to know yourself and an outer journey to share it with the world. After all, true leadership is not so much about what is in your head as about what is in your heart and how you use that to inspire others to greatness.
There exists within each of us a longing to leave a legacy, some proof that we were here. We need to know our lives were important, that somehow our being here mattered. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
Kobe Bryant was the only athlete to ever win a basketball championship and an Academy Award. He was also the first professional athlete who was not an actor to have his hand and footprints enshrined at Hollywood's historic Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
"The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” - Kobe Bryant
I invite you to reflect: Who has helped you become who you are? And now: Who will think of you in the same way?
Effective leadership is inspiration. A true leader does not impose commands from the outside, but inspires people to draw on their own deepest inner reserves. Much of leadership is about extracting that extra 5% of performance that individuals did not know they possessed.
Smart, clinical, sterile leadership doesn't inspire anybody, no matter how right they are. I keep my focus on people, not products, not sales. That is your #1 job as a leader.
You don't get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect. I can't think of any leader who succeeded for any length of time by presiding over a reign of terror. It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English Language are, "Well done.". People perform best when they know they have earned the trust of their leader.
Great teams are a collection of talented individuals, who need to be treated as individuals. When I was younger, I was more inclined to be severe. It was in those days that someone made a celebrated comment: "Paul treats us all alike. Like dogs!" Every associate is different, and I came to learn that they all required different care and feeding. Some would be at one extreme and need little help from me. This was particularly true of team members who had worked long with me, and understood me. With most team members, I did not have to urge them to increase their work rate or expend more energy, but there were a few, who needed that extra poke. I'm sure from time to time, I underestimated the degree of intimidation experienced by newer team members. I try to distinguish among my team, trying to learn everything possible about the emotional makeup and then use that knowledge to its best effect. I am now a psychologist more than a slave driver. Sales is a pressure business, and on my team I put on the most pressure. The point is that I've got to learn 17 ways to pressure 17 associates.
Part of the way to extract the most out of people is to show genuine loyalty when the rest of the world is baying for blood. Sales provides plenty of opportunities for a leader to show his support. There may be the times, when someone is significantly short of meeting sales targets . But more often than not, it is the little things - like helping associates improve their techniques. I was not doing these things because I was trying to emulate Mother Teresa, I was doing them because they would help the overall team performance but they had the side-effect of demonstrating to the team member that we had confidence in him or her. This instils loyalty; it also helped them to lift their game. And so, inadvertently, I gradually came to understand this back-door route to inspiring people.
I hope that what you've read here had provoked you to think about leadership in a new way. The journey to becoming a leader who inspires others is an inner journey to know yourself and an outer journey to share it with the world. After all, true leadership is not so much about what is in your head as about what is in your heart and how you use that to inspire others to greatness.
There exists within each of us a longing to leave a legacy, some proof that we were here. We need to know our lives were important, that somehow our being here mattered. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
Posts
