What Does Being a Leader Look Like?

Leadership....We Were Going Through Some Keepers Relating to Leadership and Found This Piece Dating Back to 2010

What Does Being a Leader Look Like?

From the book CEO Material by Debra Benton,

Page 91, DebraBenton.com

If you choose to lead (because it is your choice), you

  • Think “we” instead of “me”; you put forth individual effort to create team-based wins

  • Have other awareness not just self-awareness and campaign for others, not yourself

  • Understand that being a leader is a service job – service to employees, social causes, and customers (note: we would add shareholders, suppliers and providers of credit)

  • Improve your people’s reputation, not your own alone, and you keep it about others, not you

  • Grow others and share credit; you make it possible for others to use their abilities and take people to places they normally wouldn’t go on their own

  • Don’t just focus on your work but focus instead on the business as a whole; you get a large number of people moving in a similar direction where they’re able to accomplish a great thing

  • Build a team of like-minded people around you and fill in gaps of what’s missing in your own expertise

  • Take responsibility for your own weakness, even if only in private, and you get skills or put people around you with skills

  • Grow things and free up capital, and you see where the company can go and where you can be of help

  • Keep whatever team you lead moving

  • Do more than get everything done; you make a huge impact every day

  • Spark ambitions in others-both those under your direct control and those who are not

  • Make choices, minute by minute, that make you better in your work

  • Treat your people as associates / colleagues, not subordinates

  • Have organized thinking, and you can take a problem or opportunity and sort it out logically.