Are You Willing to Be a Best-Possible Leader?
“Are you willing to be a ‘best-possible’” leader and help your company become the best it can be?
The initial answer to this question is nearly always yes. Of course!
What would you say if asked that question?
Before you answer, we need to establish what it means to be a best-possible leader and what it takes to become a best-possible enterprise. The most important thing to know and remember is that it is about deliberate intent and action and not about arrival. Because your team’s best-possible, gets better as it gets better, it can never arrive, but it can excel all along your journey through time.
Whether you are newly in command or a seasoned veteran, you have to be willing and able to lead with creativity and systematic pursuit of your company’s best-possible.
After spending the last 20 years working with hundreds of leaders, I have found there is a series of leadership impediments looming over every leader’s journey. They exist because we are human, our teammates are human, and we all gravitate towards a sense of security—the sense that I am doing the best I can. The most important step is accepting that you can do better.
In order to become a best-possible leader, you will have to overcome many, if not all of these common impediments—which can be done only if you are willing.
- Lack of a clear vision and enabling strategies
- Failure to motivate your team
- Resource constraints
- Failure to recognize and reward success
- Continued reliance on traditional, out-of-context decisions
- Complacency; lack of urgency
- Thinking small
- Parochialism, the “not invented here” syndrome
- Inadequate optimization technology—failing to capture complex opportunities
- Fear of or distaste for technology-based leadership
- Putting off the journey – the “full plate” syndrome
- Narcissism, wanting to do it on your own, needing to get the credit
- Playing down to their level—comparing performance to the competition instead of best-possible
- Overcautious, risk-averse leadership
- Defensiveness, defending the status quo
As you read the list, the natural inclination is to justify the existence of some, to challenge the applicability of others in “your business,” and to re-commit to overcoming some that are obvious, well-known personal challenges. “Willing” leaders must accept that any one of these impediments can derail efforts to become the best they can be and will find a way to understand and be “able” to overcome all that are applicable.
Ultimately, it is far easier to convince ourselves that we are doing the best anyone could do in our situation, than to accept the challenge of becoming the best we can be. If you commit to yourself and to your team to take them as far as they can go, you will find that every one of your challenges is identifiable, manageable and an opportunity for advancement—and you’ll be pleased to find that your best-possible is greater than you could have imagined.
Category: Business Growth & Strategy Communication & Alignment Leadership
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