Leading Into The New Year

The new year has come. Consultants and executives are huddling together working on strategies to drive business forward and achieve the lofty goals they’ve proclaimed to everyone who will listen. And yet, as General Norman Schwarzkopf said, “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without strategy.”

All too often strategy gets all the attention while leaders ignore the more important force for building a great organization and achieving their goals, leadership.

Figuring out the details of getting things done takes knowledge and skill but inspiring people to get these things done requires true leadership. It’s about having a vision and the ability to share it well so that all feel encouraged to come together to bring it to fruition.

And where does true leadership flow from? Character. Character, an individual’s nature and reputation based on moral force, integrity, and strength of will to hold fast to their basic beliefs, in spite of great obstacles.

Character is shown through your actions and through the humility in your words. The harder you try to show how great a leader you are, the less you appear that way. True leadership means not always taking credit for successes and not being the center of attention. It’s about leading by example and doing the right thing even when no one is watching.

Yet true leadership is also about accepting responsibility…for failure. When all goes well, the success is theirs. When things go poorly, as President Truman famously understood, the buck stops on your desk.

We started with General Schwarzkopf on the powerful role of character on true leadership. We end with Lao Tzu who so many years ago told us the results of true leadership, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say ‘we did it ourselves.’ “

 

 

 

Commenting area

  1. Character first, everything else second.
    Makes good sense to me. Nicely stated.

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