I’ve been thinking about leadership over the last few days and some of the things I’ve been reading and some of the things people have been talking about. Leadership is a tricky thing and always open to people that want to discredit you or bring you down however on the flip side you also set an example and the things you do are the things that will be duplicated, good or bad.
I think I’ve been a natural leader ever since I was a little kid and even more so as I grew up in Hockey as I ended up being the Captain of a few teams I played on. Even back then when I was captain there were parents and coaches who tried to strip that away from me because I fell into a slump. Yeah the politics of hockey are NASTY. I remember is like it was yesterday, I had made the Bantam AA team in Sherwood Park and was captain of the team that year. I feel into a slump 1/2 way into the season and the jackass coaches (who really never liked me in the first place but had to keep me because of my skill level) wanted to strip my ‘C’. I told them no, I’ll pull out of it, knowing full well they would not give it back to me. I found out later a lot of the parents didn’t like me either because they felt their kids should have been Captian. Wow talk about politics. Don’t miss that.
That was a bit of a tangent, not sure where i was going with that but being a leader is tough work and eyes are always on you. It’s what you do when the eyes are on you that really defines a leader. As we continue to grow in this business more and more eyes will be on Lindsay and I and the things that we do from this blog, to what we talk about, to what our actions are, are always under a watchful eye of many people including our team and the future people our team brings on.
This business is all about duplication which is why its important that we duplicate a successful franchise and is exactly what we’ve been taught from our leaders and mentors. It’s what we are teaching our new up and coming leaders so they can duplicate and so on and so forth. What you do as a leader will be duplicated so we need to make sure that the example we are giving is something we want in our business. I’ve been thinking about this blog and how it represents a lot of what we are going through in this business and talks about our ups and downs and one of our cardinal rules is “don’t pass negative/challenges down-line”. What that means is if your having a bad day or what not it’s not something you want to pass down to your team, you want to be that example to them and yes while you can have crappy days, talk with your upline about them. If your having a bad day and your team knows about it, maybe there is something they wanted to talk to you about but if your in a bad mood or what not they won’t want to bother you with their problem. So set the example.
One person I highly respect on the subject of leadership is John Maxwell. http://www.johnmaxwell.com/. He is the world’s leader on leadership and has some pretty amazing books and audio on it. I’m really looking forward to reading “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” where I can pick up more great info on leadership and how to be that example. Its a blessing that John Maxwell gives his time to World Wide Dreambuilders because he knows the kind of leaders that are being built within this group. He only endorses two companies, WWDB and Chick-Fil-A. LOL i’m not what what Chick-Fil-A has but that’s pretty sweet. I know he’s been to Edmonton a few times and if you ever get a chance to listen to John, make an effort to see him.
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Please check out these other all-star bloggers in the 2010 Summer Blogging Challenge. Cliff – Peer Pressure Works, Chad – The Grind, Kelly – ‘Round the Bend, Kim – In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle – Teacher, Tinkerer, Farmer, Geek, Liam – In the Now, Brad – Kick Me Out Soon, Tammy – Tam I am, Erron – From The Inside Looking In, James – Feelings of White, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine - Because
I think there is a difference between passing down negative thoughts and passing down lessons learned from negative things or challenges. Every project I manage, I sit back and think of what went right and what I would change next time. This has been really helpful. I discuss this with my other fellow leads so we can all grow, and I also learn from their projects.
I have also shared some of this with my boss before. He is a great guy and if a project had some challenges with budgets, time lines or resources, I express to him what was difficult and what I would do next time. Not everything is in our control so I think he is relieved to see that I understand what the situation was and learned from it. It gives him confidence that I will be even more ready for that issue next time. I think the word I have learned the most this year is to “mitigate”. In our project plans we even identify potential risks and how we will mitigate them. It really helps deal wit inevitable issues.
Great insight Tammy. Yeah we do pass down lessons learned and things that did not work to our team because we want them to be successful and not go through the same mistakes that we did. So far working out great.
However for work, I WISH we could have a lessons learned after our projects. Seems nobody wants to learn from their mistakes which is pretty bad because we go through the SAME ones over and over again yet I cannot get the business to sit down with us to go over that type of stuff. Frustrating for a project manager and at times I just want to say run the damn project yourself!