By the yard, leading is hard.  By the inch, it's a cinch!
 

Has someone defeated you as their leader?  Every relationship involves a mutual struggle to see who will lead and who will follow.  For example, our cat wants to go out using the front door.  I want her to use her specially built cat-door in our basement window.  She meows at the front door.  I point to the basement door.  Who will win?  Whoever doesn't give up!

Many leaders I coach and train have been defeated by dug-in people they work with.  Often it's a subordinate.  Sometimes it's a boss or peer.  The leader wants a better result, requiring a real behavior change but they just can't get the person to budge.  The person is still meowing at the front door, and the defeated leader keeps resentfully putting up with it, rather than doing what's needed to help the person change, grow and perform up at peak levels.

Defeated leaders just don't have the right tools for that particular leadership challenge.  Let's face it.  People are complicated creatures.  You ask.  You remind.  You show.  You clarify.  You insist.  You even get upset (that's when their meowing gets really loud!).  Then you give up.   Maybe one, two, even five years go by. Then you find a way to get rid of them.  Transfer them, re-structure their job, fire them.  What a cost!  What stress and aggravation!

Effective leaders make mastering the skill of a leadership a top priority.  They know their success depends getting others to follow, willingly and freely.  What's the proof?  They are willing to set aside their need for short term task accomplishment (tons of work, done to their own high standards) and focus on what the other person needs in order to help them rise to that a higher standard. 

Good leaders see "the inch in front of them", and don't get blinded by the yard they want so badly to accomplish.  The result is a leader who can skillfully influence another person to move an inch, then a second inch until within a few days, weeks or even months, that person has moved the whole yard.  This is a people skill that requires setting aside your own technical wizardry and becoming committed to lifting the skills & results of others, starting where they're at, not where you'd like them to be.  Then watch their abilities soar, and your career along with them!

sincerely,

John Kuypers
 

Under John Kuypers' expert facilitation, leaders unravel and resolve real-world people challenges that everyone in the group is struggling with - people who miss deadlines, who come with problems not solutions, who have a negative attitude, poor initiative, don't buy in...and dozens more!  For under $1000 per person for six months, this is leadership training that is all beef and no fat, building skills that leaders will use time and time again for the rest of their careers.  Go to http://www.winleadership.com/workshops/clinic.htm  for more information or call us at 1-877-688-6326

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