As we witness the aftermath of superstorm Sandy all eyes are on leaders like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It’s difficult to imagine the challenges that national, state and community leaders face right now, and these men and women’s actions are playing out on an international stage. Thinking about leadership not only in challenging times, but in all types of situations, I’d like to share a post I published last summer about how leaders can demonstrate vision, innovation, and continuous improvement, and inspire others to do the same.
From July 29, 2011
There is no shortage of articles on what makes a great leader, and most focus either on innate personality traits such as maintaining high ethical standards, having strong personal discipline, and essentially being a person that others want to emulate, or practical behaviors like leading by example and demanding quality results. Other ideas that crop up in the leadership literature include difficult-to-define ideals such as the ability to motivate others and the ability to exemplify a personal or corporate vision.
Taking an Action Imperative™ view on leadership, the following ideas are the most relevant. We can call these three key points vision, innovation, and relentless improvement.
- Effective leaders focus on the big picture, understand their vision and set goals to reach it. They carry out those goals themselves while ensuring that others do the same, using objective performance indicators.
- Good leaders encourage risk-taking and innovation, but expect real results, not just idle experimentation. They delegate and empower others by giving them responsibility and the freedom to carry out their work in the way they choose.
- Excellent leaders keep everyone moving forward by setting new and higher goals for themselves and their organizations rather than resting on their laurels and maintaining the status quo.
© 2011, 2012 – Rick Pay – All Rights Reserved
Authors: Paige McKinney, Rick Pay
I agree that leaders should focus on the big picture, too many people focus on the small day to day things and fail to take time to think about where their actions are taking them. Good Post.
Yes, so often long-term goals get put on the back burner while we spend time dealing with less important issues. Thank you for reading!