Leadership – Page 5 – Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe

Use Adversity to Improve

People are going to be better than you at things. You can be intimidated or inspired.

Run from the discomfort or lean into the challenge.

The choice is yours.

Making things as simple as possible takes a lot of though and effort.

Making things complex and confusing takes little thought and effort.

Which one do you think you can do?

You will never control your team. They will do what they want.

Your task as a leader is to help guide them to make good choices when you are not there.

If you need to be there, you aren’t leading, you are doing their work.

Caring about outcomes can produce narrow ways to view the world.

Focusing on values and process can mean teams create different outcomes but embody a shared purpose.

A team is built on the big things rather than the small things that pull you apart.

When being right is more important than being correct we promote lies and deceit.

When being correct is more important we promote learning and growth.

Success can mean we are doing things right. It doesn’t mean we are doing everything correctly.

Don’t take success as the end point of learning.

Take it as an opportunity to figure what you think is right, versus what is correct.

Finding positive role models are great.

It is also helpful to find negative role models. Figuring out what not to do is just as helpful as figuring out what to do.

The positive role model and the negative role model might be the same person.

A HiPPO is the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

If you are the HiPPO be careful with your actions. You can create courage or chaos within your team.

If you aren’t the HiPPO, be careful to make them happy, and sometimes that is not about being good at your job but stroking their ego.

There is a difference between who makes the decision and who makes the decision on who makes the decision.

The immature leader wants to be both.

The mature leader knows they can only be one.

Setting up what success means at the start of the project is important.

Learning that your assumptions at the start were wrong is smart.

Changing what success means when you learn through the project is wise.