Leaders don’t have to be in positions of authority. Anyone can be a leader.
Effective Leaders Must Be Committed to a Vision
The first “secret” is that you must recognize a problem situation that needs to be changed, then have a vision for the world after the change. Without that there is no need for a leader, just a manager.
Then the leader needs to be committed to that vision and the leader needs an agenda (strategy) to accomplish vision.
Effective Leaders Communicate the Vision
Leaders have confidence in their vision and agenda and they communicate the agenda early. This is one of the big secrets of effective leadership. If you show up with an vision, you will set the agenda. People like to take the easy way out and avoid thinking. If someone has done thinking for them, they will resist doing their own.
I know of an organization whose meeting ground rules included, “We leave our agendas at the door.” Of course, nothing ever got done.
Effective Leaders Have Patience and Persistence.
Stealthy leaders will lay a proposal or idea on the table and not mention it again for a couple of months. Then they mention it again and wait. After the third or fourth time, others will be asking, “Haven’t we done that yet?” Works every time.
Leaders ask a lot of questions.
We never know it all. There is always someone who knows more than you on any specific topic.
An executive started to walk around the facility on a daily basis. He reported to his staff, “I know why things don’t go right around here. Every single assumption we have made about what goes on outside our glass-walled executive offices is wrong.”
Effective Leaders Make Decisions.
Colin Powell is famous for taking a 40/70 approach to decision-making. Once you have 40% of the information you would like to have, make the decision. You will never have all the information you want. Be wary if you have 70% of the information because you still have the risk of Black Swans and unknown unknowns, but will be over-confident. You will also have spent too much time and money getting the perfect information.
See the admiral make a decisiion in In Harm’s Way.
When you get the urge to delay a decision, ask yourself, “What exactly will I learn in the future?” The answer is almost always, “Nothing that will change the decision.” The cost of delay often exceeds the value of the information. See the other admiral avoid delaying a decision in the same movie.
Effective Leaders Delegate
Ineffective leaders do it all themselves. See Delegate or Die. Delegation can be painfull at first. You can do the task better and faster, but the load will eventually overwhelm you. Here is a post on How to Delegate.
Derek Shivers wrote a fascinating little book, Anything You Want, about his experience with delegation. You can find a summary here.
Effective Leaders Develop Others.
Be a mentor. This should be obvious. Train others, if only to turn them into trusted delegatees. Some say, “But then I will lose them to other organizations.” So what? If they leave, you will now have someone in that organization who owes you gratitude. Then train the next person.