00:00 Intro
Welcome to Leaders Lift - a podcast for aspiring and existing leaders!
I'm your host, Greg Cunningham and I look forward to being a part of your leadership journey.
This is one of the three launch episodes I'll be publishing and in this episode we will covering, at a very high level, what leadership should be and what it means to lift.
Intro
If you look up the definition of leader in a dictionary, odds are you will be disappointed. Or at least you should be disappointed. Dicationary.com says that leadership is the function of a leader and that a leader is someone who guides or directs a group. Not terribly helpful. I can think of all kinds of roles where someone is guiding or directing a group but they are certainly not leaders.
I believe all of us that are either in a leadership position or aspire to be need to have a much deeper understanding of what leadership really is. We need to have our own definition of leadership. Once we have that firmly set in our minds (and hearts) then that gives us something to aspire to.
Over the course of the next 30 minutes or so, I hope to give you some ideas to consider as part of your own definition of leadership. Hopefully this will get you thinking about what leadership core you want to have in your life.
02:13 - What Leadership Should Be
For me, one of the core non-negotiable parts of any definition of leadership should be the ability to lift. To lift those they lead and themselves above where they are or have been.
I think best way to summarize what leadership should be is to list some key things that should be a part of real leadership. Here are a few that I would place on such a list:
The right motives
Number one should be a desire to help others
The right knowledge and wisdom
Tools and skills
The right amount of confidence
Some ego is ok
Self-awareness
Always learning and always adapting
Understanding that you lead people (and manage projects)
What others would you feel should be included?
Leadership should also be something that we can all look to. While everyone may not be able to be leaders as far as having the title or changing the world, we all can be leaders in our own little sphere of influence. Ultimately leader is all about making a difference to someone. So all of us can be leaders in that sense and I'm positive all of us will have those kinds of opportunities in our lives.
I do want to point out a few misconceptions that folks may have about leadership. Leadership is not:
Being a good manager
Being everything to everyone
Solving every problem
Leaders are very often seen as problem solvers, but that doesn't mean they solve problems on their own. That may need to ensure that problems are solved, but that is very different from doing it themselves.
09:42 - What It Means to Lift
So let's talk about the title of this podcast - Leaders Lift. I chose that name because I believe that at the core of the best leaders is their ability to lift others (and themselves). That can be any kind of lifting: lifting someone when they are down, lifting them to a new level (think goal attainment), lifting an organization, etc. These are all examples of lifting that I hope to explore as part of our journey.
These types of lifting lead to things like making a difference in the lives of families, teams, organizations, communities and maybe even a small (or large) part of the world helping organizations and individuals meet their goals and more.
Ultimately it means to make a difference:
In a family
On a team
Within an organization
Within a community
And maybe even to change the world a bit, or a lot
It also means helping others live up to their potential
It means focusing on others and trying to do the right things for them
Do the right thing for them
Sometimes that means doing tough things (like helping them find success elsewhere)
Why leadership is so important
The person I would consider my first professional mentor really did seek to lift me and everyone on the team. Her focus was to build the organization and that meant investing in her team. She had a vision of what we could be as individuals and as a team. She saw more in my personal potential than I did and she helped me figure out how to learn and grow. She was tough. If I was of course, I sure knew it. She demanded excellence but supported us and gave us to the tools to achieve it.
On the flip side, I have had leaders that held the position of leader but did not have the same ability or desire to lift.
Some had a desire but just didn't have the skill. For example: some leaders didn't understand how to be tough so that those they led could learn and grow - by doing different things.
Others had the skill but lacked the desire to do it. I remember two different leaders that basically told me I was underperforming (which is fine to hear and happens to everyone) and that they were not going to help me improve. So they were good at pointing out where I needed to improve but didn't want to lift me to that level.
I think it's also import to point out that lifting is part of who you are, not necessarily something to do. If I think about these previous examples of leaders that lifted and did not, I can see that in the first example, helping other reach their potential, meet their goals, etc. was just part of who she was.
It's something that requires
Deliberate hard work
Learning
Trying new things
Caring about others more than ourselves and caring about them as a person and not just a worker/member of the team/resource to help achieve our goals/etc.
Let me give you one other example with that same leader:
She and I had to go to San Francisco on a trip. We had a single day of meetings so it was super easy to fly in and out. I was excited as I had never been there. As soon as she found out that was the case, she changed our plans and we went a day early. She basically spent the day acting as tour guide (she had lived there for a long time). It was amazing. There was no personal benefit other than her wanting to give me a chance to experience something I hadn't before.
A few years later, she sent me back to San Francisco for a conference. When she found out it was my wife and I's 10th anniversary and I was going to take her, she helped me plan out the whole trip.
All of this was in addition to her taking someone with no management experience and helping them become a VP within the organization.
Wrap Up
I'm not sure if what we have discussed today aligns with your definition of leadership or not. But I do hope that at least I have given you some things to think about and consider. That's the most important piece. Be open to a different definition of leadership than those that may be popular in the world today.
Think about this concept of lifting. If each of us could just lift one other person every day, think about how much better our families, our teams, our communities and even the world would be.
My challenge to you is to think about where you are in your leadership journey. How much do you focus on lifting others? Are there changes you can make (big or small) that would help you me more focused on the right things? Honestly answering those questions and then seeking to do just a bit better tomorrow than today will go a long way to making a difference.
