A colleague asked me this terrific question: How have your ideas on leadership practices changed in the last decade? What would you emphasize today than you didn’t a decade ago?
Ten years ago I was sure I knew a few things.
Twenty years ago I was sure I knew nearly everthing.
Thirty years ago I was sure I knew everything.
I’m 58 now. I hope I’m growing in humility over time; certainly my family, friends, and God provide ample reasons to be more humble! There are fewer things that I’m certain of, but they are deeper and more foundational. I stress these much more now that I did in decades past:
- If you need a new idea, read an old book. Be increasingly selective about the quality of your input streams.
- Connecting head and heart is crucial for the biggest unique contributions you can offer the world. This connection requires that you be in touch with the transcendent aspects of human experience, not only the logical/physical/computable.
- Experience is not the best teacher. Reflecting on experience is the best teacher (even experiences from history and from biographies).
- Being an “all things to all people” leader is a fantasy. Aim to be the “very few things to the correct set of individuals” leader. You can inspire at a distance but impact comes with up-close interaction.
- Don’t believe the lie that consuming more makes you happy. Joy comes as you create and contribute.
- Be a professional, not an amateur. (The difference is substantial.)
Mindsets and Mental Frameworks I still emphasize from previous decades:
- Leadership is a craft (learnable skills + art to produce something beautiful and useful)
- 80/20 – there is always enough time if you have enough focus
- Manage your energy, rather than time
- Communication is a key paradigm for leading people
- Stack skills and work across disciplines to generate breakthroughs
- Bad systems overcome even the best individuals, so think and design in terms of systems
- All leadership begins with self-leadership; all growth begins at the edge of your comfort zone
