I attended the Leadercast 2016 simulcast event this year and staffed a booth with copies of my new book, The Fraud Factor, and my previous book, Fearless Leadership (2006). This was my third year attending and hosting a booth, and this was the best year so far.
I decided to share a few key nuggets from the speakers that day, who included: Kat Cole, Nick Saban, Andy Stanley, Henry Cloud, James Brown, and Steve Wozniak. Quite an all-star cast from a wide variety of industries! The primary theme in this conference was on vision, integrity, clarity, and authenticity as a leader.
Here are the seven nuggets that stood out the most to me from the simulcast:
- Nugget I: Leadership is helping others achieve their goals, not the other way around. If you have been thinking that being a leader gives you access to people to help you achieve YOUR goals, you are missing the most important emphasis. Not that others, in achieving their goals, help you achieve yours, but the focus should be on helping them. That is, notice what they do and reinforce them in their work. Work to affect one person at a time in order to impact the whole team. Show them how what they are doing affects them, their goals, the team goals, and the overall success of the organization.
- Nugget II: There are several places you can be in your communication as a leader:
- no connection with others
- bad connection with others (feeling inadequate as a leader)
- feel-good connection (feels fine, but no depth of connection, no real trust)
- real connection (being who you truly are, surrounded by others who are genuine, in part because you have encouraged them to be so).
The most important component of real connection is to be authentically who you are, and to bring out the best, most genuine side of others. I address the importance of this nugget in my new book, The Fraud Factor, which helps the reader move from feeling inadequate to being authentic.
- Nugget III: Be generous with your time and money, since they belong to God. He provides what comes to you through your work, and He gave you the attributes and abilities in the first place. So, none of it really belongs to you. The research shows that doing the right thing ethically is always the best thing for the business in the long run. Business decisions, like all decisions, should be made on biblical principles, not on situational circumstances. Leadership should be based on clarity about who you are, and then leading from that authentic place.
- Nugget IV: Though integrity is critically important in being a leader others trust, clarity trumps integrity. When you exhibit clarity in where you are taking the team, what you expect, and how you intend to get there, the result is influence.
- Nugget V: Vision is the ‘what’ an organization is pursuing, not the ‘how’. Vision should engage the heart of others. Vision should be simple, convincing (in that it solves a problem that others recognize must be solved), and celebrated (when people get it right).
- Nugget VI: When working to make improvements as a leader, focus on those things that are small enough to change and big enough to matter. Determine the number one priority, after which all the other priorities fall into place.
- Nugget VII: As a leader, your job is to help others see what is possible, so they can buy into the vision, or help recast it in a way that engages them. Ask yourself, “If a hotshot was sitting in my seat right now, what would they change on their first day on the job?” Then ask yourself, “Why am I not making that change today?”
I hope you find these seven nuggets as provocative and insightful as I did in first hearing them. You can find more information about Leadercast at the following website:
And information about ordering my new book, The Fraud Factor–that helps leaders move from inadequate to authentic–at Atlas Books:
Great summary Bruce! Thanks for being an important part of CBMC Northland and Leadercast Northland.