Develop Leadership With Service

Who, or what do you serve? As a leader, what is your way of helping others?

Leaders must first serve. They must first serve to even understand the importance of leadership. They benefit tremendously by serving people, other leaders, and organizations before ever stepping into a leadership role. People who have not learned how to follow have very little chance of successfully leading. The credibility, the resilience, the humility that serving provides build the character needed to lead others in difficult tasks, projects, and movements. Leading is hard, and the muscle comes from following, from serving.

Whether it's in the food industry, or emergency services, or education, or law enforcement, or housing, or foster care...there are dozens of ways to learn to serve and then to continue serving. It's what the world needs. It's what people need to develop leadership.

A leader who remembers how to serve will lead longer than one who forgets.

How, or who, are you serving today?

-- doug smith

Comments

Turn That Feedback Upside Down

Is feedback painful? Do you hate both giving AND receiving feedback? Most people, in my experience, tend to avoid feedback because there is pain and even emotional trauma attached. Critical feedback hurts. Positive feedback, when it comes at all, isn't always enough to counter the trauma of the critical feedback. We do need critical feedback. We need to be able to benefit from observations and experiences to improve our performance going forward. As leaders, we have a responsibility to provide our team members with both support and challenge. Feedback should be part of that challenge. But it's not really "feedback" unless it's flipped upside down. On my Fender amplifier, if I play my guitar too loud and too close to the speaker the sound feeds-back. I like that sound (it reminds me of Jimi Hendrix) but many people don't and it certainly would not fit in most worship services or orchestra pits. The feedback is essentially telling me to turn it down. But I don...

Rival as Coach

Competition can be rough but it can also be educational. If you study your opponent you might learn their secrets. If you can listen to your opposition, they might be sending you valuable signals that could improve your own performance. What if your rival is also your best coach? -- doug smith

Speak Your Mind

I like people who speak their mind, people who say what they're thinking with radical honesty. You can learn a lot that way, especially when you disagree. Not everyone will appreciate radical honesty. They want you to hide the ugly truths. They want you to sugar-coat the feedback. That's why even when telling your truth without filters feels right (and it does) we still need to ready for reactions to that truth. Disagreement takes many forms. Some forms of disagreement are healthy, and some are not. You've no doubt experienced both. Speak your mind but remember that it will likely generate a response. -- doug smith

The Problem With Compromises

Think about the last time you compromised on something. Whether it was a big compromise or a little compromise, how do you feel about it now? While we often call it "meet in the middle" it seldom does. Compromises are not automatically fair, no matter how implied that fairness is. Someone usually gets more out of a compromise than the person they are "compromising" with. If the low end is you, you don't like it -- and you remember that. If the top end of the compromise is you, you probably forget all about it even though the inequity simmers in the background. Compromises must be constantly revisited because they are inevitably unfair. If you get the chance to balance things out, your relationship will prosper. If you miss that chance, the relationship will suffer. What's your choice? -- doug smith

Unconditional Giving

Is giving easy for you, or do you find it hard? Do you serve gladly, or with resentment? Do you give conditionally, or unconditionally? What if we are made whole by giving ourselves away? That just might change a lot of answers... -- doug smith

Action!

You've heard the term "Action!" in the movie business applied to beginning a scene. Get moving. Do your part. Play your role. Action. Often, the action is incomplete, incorrect, or just insufficient. When that happens on the set you'll hear "Back to one!" which means start the scene over from the beginning. You get another chance. Some directors will even give you a couple extra chances to get it right. Other directors, like Stanley Kubrick, might insist on dozens of "back to ones" to make sure something brilliant happens. We don't always get do-overs in real life, do we? But we can't get stuck at "one" or "back to one". We need action. Sketch out all the plans you want as long as you remember that it takes action to achieve your goals. And what if you don't like the results of your action? Maybe...just maybe, give back to one a chance... -- doug smith

A Bit of Justice

Is it possible to have peace without justice? I wrestle with that question because I know what I'd like it to be and I suspect that the real answer is something else. How about you? The path of peace is sometimes covered with conflict. Problems don't always present in a respectful, peaceful manner. Sometimes they barely even disguise the greed behind the behavior. Tough, yet almost certain, the answer involves an assertive response. A problem caused by greed might need a bit of justice. Peaceful, restorative justice perhaps, but most definitely justice. -- doug smith

Some Motivation

When your goals are tied to a larger mission their value prods you forward. One more step, one more step, for goodness' sake take one more step... -- doug smith

Clarify and then Work

Where does success start? It starts with the goal. What is it that you really, really want? Clarifying what your goal is can save you hours, weeks, and years of frustration. Work on what matters. Work on your goals. -- doug smith

How To Give and Receive Constructive Feedback

I'm facilitating a training session this week on feedback and coaching so of course my research never stops. No matter how many times I've delivered a program, there's always more to learn. I found this video and recommend it. If you'd like to take some of the "sting" out of feedback, don't even think of it as feedback. Think of it as advice. Here's the ten minute video. If you don't have ten minutes, the first three minutes are golden. Three key points that I got from the video: Focus on the task, not the person Ask for advice, not feedback Your "second score" is how you take and process your first score. If someone says that your performance was a three on a scale of ten (ouch!) you can still get a ten on how you use that information. -- doug smith

doug smith training

Search This Blog