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Making Your Leadership Your Life

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Word count: 794

Summary: Many leaders think that their leadership is something

they do on-the-job and not in their life off-the-job. However,

the author contends that the best leadership should be

applicable both to on-and-off-the-job activities.

Make Your Leadership Your Life And Your Life Your Leadership by

Brent Filson

Companies facing global competition are expecting more from all

employees, more initiative, more innovation and more results.

Critical to meeting these expectations is leadership. The word

"leadership" comes from a old Norse word meaning "to make go."

Leadership is needed in organizations to make things go, to

muster and coordinate direction, ardent commitment and resource

alignment.

Working with thousands of leaders of all ranks and functions

during the past 21 years, I've seen that most leaders deem

leadership as exclusively an on-the-job dynamic. They don't see

it as a life dynamic.

Companies seeking more from their employees must promote

leadership that delivers more, and that leadership can only

deliver more if it is effective both on and off the job.

If you don't make your leadership your life and your life your

leadership, you diminish both your leadership and your life.

The reasons are simple. The best leaders establish a deep,

human, emotional connection with the audience. Why is that

necessary to achieve organizational results? Leadership isn't

about getting people to do what they want to do. If people

simply had to do what they wanted to do, leaders wouldn't be

needed. Instead, leadership is about getting people to do what

they don't want to do and be totally committed to doing it.

These people have a good chance of achieving a lot more results,

achieving those results faster, and achieving "more, faster" on

a continual basis. One may tyrannically order people to get

results, but the effectiveness of such leadership is not as

consistent nor as substantial as having people make the free

choice to get results. And people will make that free choice

mainly in an environment in which deep, human, emotional

relationships are developed.

Look at the leaders in your life. I'm sure you've been at the

receiving end of both the tyrants and those with whom you've had

deeply beneficial relationships with. Weren't you more likely to

go all out for those leaders who promoted an environment in

which those better relationships flourished?

Clearly, that's an environment one should seek to establish in

one's life as well. The relationships you develop as a leader

can be similar to the relationships you should develop in your

life outside your job. In my many seminars on the Leadership

Talk, I have seen people use my processes outside their job,

with their spouses, friends, and children, etc.

There are many values that should be promoted in our lives:

trust, honesty, integrity, coming through on commitments,

fairness, tenacity, tolerance, and more. Let's "trust" as one

example.

I believe we should live a life of trusting others. I call it

"living in trust." Of course, trust can be taken too far, and we

may open ourselves up to be deceived and betrayed. My wife says

I often trust others too much; and certainly I have paid in many

ways over my life for such a propensity. But I believe that even

though we may be deceived if we trust too much; we will

nevertheless suffer more if we don't trust enough.

Living in trust means extending trust without conditions until

that trust is clearly betrayed. And then, depending on the

circumstances, we may continue to extend trust even if it is

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betrayed. For when it is betrayed, we may not necessarily be the

poorer for it. We may indeed be the richer; for without trust,

we cannot establish deep relationships.

My view of trust in life can be extended to leadership.

Leadership is about getting continual increases in great

results. To do that, leaders must engender trust in the people

they lead. In fact, great results can't accrue without strong

bonds of trust established between the leader and the people.

I've often said that it is better for a leader to have bought

the Brooklyn Bridge for a nickel rather than to have sold it for

one. People will not be led by you to do extraordinary things

unless they trust you; but they won't trust you unless they know

you are taking the risk to trust them. In fact, many

organizations get into trouble when the people don't trust or

stop trusting their leaders; and when their leaders stop

trusting them.

So, trust operates both in our lives and on our jobs as leaders

and must be cultivated both on and off the job.

There are many other values that should be manifested in both

the life one leads and the leadership one manifests. The point

is that when you make sure the leadership traits you carry out

on the job are the very traits you live by in your life, you

enhance the quality of your leadership and your life.

2006 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE

LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO

GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The

Filson Leadership Group, Inc. - and for more than 20 years has

been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious

results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free

white paper: "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at

http://www.actionleadership.com For more on the Leadership Talk:

http:///www.theleadershiptalk.com

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