Tag Strong Leadership

Weak Leaders – Part Three

Steve Keating 3 Comments

I think it’s safe to say that most, likely all, successful people accept full responsibility for their actions and decisions. So then do Strong Authentic Leaders. 

Weak leaders tend to play the blame game. They look for someone else to dump responsibility on when things go wrong. Or they make excuses. My favorite is the combo responsibility dump/excuse of miscommunication. The leader communicated well, the person on the receiving end wasn’t bright enough to understand. 

That “combo” covers both bases. The leader has no responsibility for the mistake and the blame is firmly shifted away from the leader, except it really isn’t. 

Just a side note here…Authentic Leaders accept 100% responsibility for all communication. They know it is their responsibility to make certain the other person completely understood what was said. 

Not accepting responsibility for your actions and decisions leads to an entire set of consequences, whether you’re a leader or not. 

The first, and I think the most serious, is an exaggerated sense of self. If you believe your excuses it makes it difficult to build relationships with others. You are seen as less trustworthy. You likely become more critical of other people. Your feelings of infallibility increases your expectations of others. You become unrealistic, intolerant, and demanding. 

Your attitude becomes a repellent to other people making it nearly impossible to lead. You may not realize it at first and weak leaders may never realize it, but you’re not fun to be around. All because you can’t, or won’t, accept responsibility for your actions and decisions. 

The most common reason for not accepting responsibility is a sense of insecurity. People, especially weak leaders think admitting to a mistake or a poor decision makes them look weak. In reality, having the courage to admit mistakes gives the appearance of strength to a leader’s followers. 

Strong Authentic Leaders see accepting responsibility as a measure of their self-worth. Their strength and self-confidence allows them to do something weak leaders can’t do…learn from their mistakes. 

Ask yourself when was the last time you may have fallen short as a leader by placing blame for your actions on someone else. Ask yourself why you did that. Be honest with yourself. That’s the first step in growing your self-confidence to a level where you’re comfortable owning your actions and decisions. 

If you struggle with accepting responsibility then start paying attention to a leader you respect. You’ll likely see them do it on a regular basis. If you want to move from the weak side of leadership to the strong side do what they do. 

You may not see a difference in yourself right away but you’ll see a difference in how people respond to you. They may even start acting as if you’re a leader! 

Weak Leaders – Part Two

Steve Keating 3 Comments

Strong Authentic Leaders make decisions. Perhaps surprisingly, so do weak leaders. What separates the two is that strong leaders act an those decisions almost immediately while weaker leaders hesitate…if they act at all.

There are lots of reason they hesitate. The biggest is fear of failure. They somehow get it in their heads that trying and failing is worse than not trying at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. All successful people fail, at least temporarily. The fact that they tried allows them to try again. Again and again, until the failure is behind them.

Not trying at all means that failure, and make no mistake, not trying is a HUGE failure, it means that the failure will always be with you. Never to be left behind. 

The first step in an action plan is often the hardest. Strong Authentic Leaders know that heavy trains often require an extra engine to get started. That’s why they aren’t afraid to ask for a little help to get going. It’s amazing the momentum that can be created with a single step. Unfortunately, weak leaders too often don’t take that step.

Weak leaders often use patience as an excuse for not starting. They are waiting for “just the right time” to begin, perhaps not realizing what they are doing is actually procrastinating. Patience is the acceptance that things can happen in a different order than you had imagined. Procrastination is waiting for the sake of waiting. Patience can provide benefits, procrastination simply kills opportunities for success. Strong Authentic Leaders know the difference. 

Strong Authentic Leaders do the hard jobs first. They know that there are only three options available when facing any challenge, they can delay, dodge or do. Strong leaders do. Weak Leaders do too but they do the easy things first hoping somehow that the hard things will either go away, be handled miraculously by someone else or that no one will notice they were never done at all. 

Weak Leaders are slow to start because they see risk in every opportunity. Strong Authentic Leaders are always moving forward because they see opportunity in every risk. Risk is a requirement for progress. Risk is a part of success. Strong Authentic Leaders are willing to take a risk, a well calculated, considered risk, in order to have a chance to lead. 

If you’re in a leadership position and find yourself hesitating then you need to ask yourself why. Are you risk adverse? Fearing failure? A wee bit too lazy to tackle the challenges of leadership? Or afraid of appearing weak by asking for help?

Well none of those are valid reasons for hesitating, they are excuses. The kind of excuses Strong Authentic Leaders do not make. So instead of making excuses start making decisions and taking action to make things happen. It won’t take long before you wonder why you weren’t doing that all along.

Weak Leaders – Part One

Steve Keating 5 Comments

One of the most common characteristics of weak leaders is complaining about a lack of resources. Weak leaders frequently complain about a lack of resources no matter how many resources they have. That tends to make me think it’s more of an excuse rather than an actual issue. 

But even if they truly have a shortage of resources I still see it as more of an excuse than anything else. 

Weak leaders complain about too small a budget. They complain about too few people to get the job done. They complain about lack of time. 

The thing is, those complaints typically don’t limit a weak leader’s ability to complete a job or assignment, they prevent them from even starting. Strong Authentic Leaders do not allow the fact that they can’t do everything they would like to do prevent them from doing everything they can do. 

Authentic leaders who face limited resources prioritize what must get done. They separate the “nice to do” from the “must do” activities and then they develop a plan to get the “must do” things done. No excuses, no delays, no worries, no problem and no complaints.

I was on a call recently where in a 10 minute period of time someone in a leadership position complained at least a dozen times about what they couldn’t do because of a lack of resources. I couldn’t take it anymore so I asked them to please tell us what, if anything, they could do. 

They seem rather stumped. 

If you’re a leader who faces limited resources you simply must stop focusing on what you can’t do. Turn your attention to the things you can do. You must realize that there is a huge difference between no resources and limited resources. If you have people on your team, if you have dollars remaining in your budget then use those along with the 1440 minutes you definitely do have each day to accomplish as much as you possibly can. 

I realize you may not have the budget, people or time to do all that’s expected but you absolutely do have everything you need to do all that you can.

So do that!