What advantages does your leadership really provide?
“If you are not creating advantages you will probably lose to someone who is”
The entire effort of your leadership ought to be targeted at creating advantages.
Advantage-Making Leaders create advantages that:
1) encourage followers,
2) influence outcomes,
3) create forward movement, and
4) increases opportunity
When your boss, colleagues and people who report to you think of you what is the first thing they think?
In the back of their mind, do they feel you encourage people, influence perception so people say yes to your request, make things happen that otherwise couldn’t happen, spot opportunity and are ready willing and able to take advantage of situations?
Advantage-making leaders create victory in spite of their circumstances.
Obstacles are not stopping points, but triggers for using your ability to create unexpected solutions.
A Silicon Valley tech V.P. was working on an initiative that required cross functional commitment and engagement. He found that his peers refused to move forward whenever an obstacle arose. They just stopped, even as their stopping was making it more difficult to meet the deadline. And they didn’t call, they just kept finding more questions. Details, in this case, were not going to make a difference.
When there are obstacles to you stop and wait, do you complain for more than a few minutes, do you ask more and more questions when the answers won’t really make a substantial difference, or do you, as this V.P. said, ‘Refuse to Lose’?
He was not saying there is no failure, he was saying there is always something to learn and move forward, to at least take engage.
Advantage-Makers are often thought of as high risk takers, but they are really doing their best to actively penetrate to the heart of problem and more importantly, to the heart of the solution, that often appears like a big risk to those who decide based upon probability rather than possibility.
While some obstacles actually are mountains, most are just pebbles that someone has thrown at you when you know how to play the game of advantage-making.
Questions:
What advantages does you leadership really provide?
I’d love to hear
