- A. Smith Blog - Leadership in Life
The strongest leaders establish their own role clarity, rather than let other define it for them.
People demand role clarity when there is significant business change and organization “flux.” Executives talk about establishing role clarity. Cross-functional teams struggling to solve problems express the hope for greater role clarity going forward. Under-staffed groups use the role clarity lever to explain what they don’t do, or can’t do. [Read more…] about Role Clarity for Leaders
Leaders are influencing far more than you realize most of the time. The math is inexorable.
I have a friend, a retired but lonely widower, who works as a Walmart greeter. He tells me that every shift he gets the opportunity to brighten the day of 600-1000 people.
I interviewed a scriptwriter for a TV series. He’s had a few small successes. “Even the series which only lasted half a season were seen by a million people. I hope I made them think, or laugh. That’s not nothing.”
We tend to underestimate 2nd and 3rd level connections. As I write this, I have 2073 connections on LinkedIn, but there are 626,339 people who are the first connection of those 2073 people. I had 14,800 people on a mailing list at one point for a side-interest of mine. Based on survey data, I estimated they were teaching 950,000 to 1.4 million people in a given month.
Think over the years. Consider your supervisors and mentors from years ago…how much are you influencing people based on what you learned (good and bad) from them? Some of those individuals have indirectly influenced tens of thousands of people.
What influence could you have over the next 3 generations in your family? What stories (and the embedded lessons) will they repeat in years to come?
We tend to underestimate the cumulative effects of many small interactions. Water beats rock in the end. “The soft word turns away wrath.” Each one of us is shaped by the many small interactions of the weeks and months and years.
You ARE a leader. You’re influencing MANY people.
What can you do today (today!) to be a better influencer?
“Everything great in leadership begins in the unseen places, like gigantic oak trees developing from an acorn sprouting in the darkness of the dirt.” — one of my mentors, reminding me to work on the inner game to harvest visible success.
If you want to achieve greatness, begin with what others do not see. Be competitive with yourself in the deep things so that you don’t need to be competitive with others in shallow things.
In the wish-it-weren’t-so category: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. You must keep score in some way which allows you to monitor progress.
Your inner scorecard is about things only you can see, and require self-discipline to execute.
Pick from this list, or choose your own: [Read more…] about The Inner Scorecard for Leaders
