Many of us don’t recognize we’re in management, we don’t recognize that we are leading anyone or that we have a team. Some of us have jobs and titles that make that evident, but just because you have the title doesn’t mean you are truly doing service to it. A lot of times service isn’t a word that enters the thought processes of some managers, supervisors or other titles that are considered leadership. We like to call those people bosses. There’s a big difference between bosses and leaders, I’ve personally worked for both as has my husband, and we would definitely choose a leader over a boss any day, particularly a servant leader. Let me drop a visual of the difference.
In my business, at work, and at home, I have or have had the opportunity to lead. Once you can get over that fixed mindset of, “I’ve always done it this way before, it works”, and learn to operate outside your comfort zone in a way that fosters the involvement and ideas other than your own, you’ll discover ways that work better and give ownership to the people working with you, which creates a team. Once you have a team tackling a task and they feel like they have some skin in the game because their ideas are at least being contemplated and sometimes used and improved upon by the rest of team, you’ll find that you can accomplish so much more together so much more quickly than if you just sat and barked orders.
Even as a mom in your home with your kids, a youth leader working on a Christmas or Easter program, a captain on a team, coach, pastor etc, while it may seem easier to give directives and wear a “parent hat,” you can be more effective when you make room for creativity and involvement, incorporating others ideas and blending them together in a way that still accomplishes the task that you need to accomplish but creates the ownership you need in the entire team, family, or group to get it done, especially if time is of the essence.
Ownership is a motivator which incentivizes your team to participate because now they have skin in the game. (whether it’s an actual game or just a task) Humans are winners, we want to win and see something we feel like we contributed to succeed!
The days of top-down leadership are archaic and I’m not the only one to call them so. Two of Shaun’s and my favorite leadership books “Extreme Ownership,” by Jocko Willink and “It’s Your Ship,” By Capt. Michael Abershoff both say the same. In fact, Jocko teaches leading up the chain of command and leading down it, indicating that while there is a chain of command, good leaders feed good information upstream not just downstream. As a leader your leader isn’t coming to you for updates, you’re readily supplying them that information so that as they make decisions and lead up their chain of command everyone is in the loop with the latest information. That can look different in the home, on a team, or in the workplace but there’s a spot for it everywhere. Even in your prayer life, as a leader you need to be going to your leader with the details!
Everyone influences someone, even siblings, we like to call that leadership. So even if you don’t have a title, you are leading because you have influence on everyone around you who sees you. What does your leadership communicate to the people you have influence over, to your team? Do they want to follow you because you’re leading the charge with them and care about what they think, or do you lose traction because you only want to use your own ideas? If you’re the smartest person on your team, you haven’t built a very good team, you need people who know more than you do about areas you have to manage in so that they can take their niches and run with them contributing to the success of the overall team.
Since I have the privilege of being married to a manager at a fortune 150 company and he meets regularly with other managers at this same company, I get to be in the presence of some amazing leaders fairly often, I listen to them, watch them and read what they read. I’ve compiled a list of 20 of the most recommended books that have been incredibly instrumental in their leadership growth and that of some of their teams as well as my own growth! I’ll drop the link so you can like it, save it, share it and you can apply some of these same lessons as you continue to grow!
I think we can all agree that one of the greatest leaders, if not the greatest, of all time was Jesus Christ. Even if you are not a Christian, you can look at his leadership strategy and see that it was effective, fostered ownership, accountability, let others use their own personality types to accomplish the tasks given by him and has passed the test of time. We refer to it as servant leadership. Jesus was direct sometimes, just as we have to be, but he still left it up to his team to decide how they could best accomplish his directives.
Leadership is something that has always fascinated me, I could go on and on about lessons I’ve learned. One of the most notable lessons our family learned when we read Jocko’s book together was irradicating the victim mentality from our mindsets. We learned to hold each other accountable and never look for a place to point fingers. To control our emotions when something happens or we disagree and we have to talk about it, in the work place that’s called professionalism, at home its called maturity.
I was listening to Selma Hayak talk about the success in her marriage and she said when something goes wrong they never look for someone to point the finger at, never play the blame game. They come together, assess the situation and offer solutions until they find the one that best fixes the issue! Imagine how much better a team could function if everyone accepted ownership and stopped looking to blame someone. If rather than complaining and pointing fingers, we offered solutions! Your family is a team, so is your workplace which means its your ship, do something about it!
Of the 20 books on that list I think I only have a few left to read. If it fascinates you, you’d like to grow as a leader in whatever capacity you are leading, and you ARE leading, check these books out! I promise you won’t be disappointed! If you know someone who’s trying to improve their leadership skills like you, or you wouldn’t have read this far, send it to them so they can join us!
Raychel Writes 