Leadership.

What is it?

I’ve had the opportunity to work for and observe all kinds of leaders. I’ve seen good managers and bad managers. I’ve seen all sorts of management styles. I had the privilege of working with and for my father for several years and observe him in leadership positions. I’ve also had the opportunity to grow into a leader myself.  I’ve learned leadership skills by example from my father as well as formally while studying for my MBA. But, I think the leadership lesson that has stuck with me the most came from him.

Now I should tell you, he doesn’t have an MBA. So, you’re not likely to recognize this right away as something you’d read from the HBR or something. But he taught me his leadership philosophy long ago …

You gotta have faith in the folk

What does that mean?

As the years have gone on, I’ve come to realize that it’s much deeper than originally seems.

First with your employees

Put your faith in them. Trust them. Let them do their jobs. Explain the goal to them. Help them see how they affect that goal. Help them understand how their decisions affect the larger picture and then let them choose what to do. Trust them to do it right - to make the right decisions. Let me walk though the implications of this:

1. Don’t micromanage. Give people empowerment to do their job however works best for them - provided they are striving for the greater goal.
2. Don’t put silly metrics in place to measure people…share the overall goal, explain to them how they affect that goal (read lots of transparency and communication) and then let them go…faith…people instinctively want to do a good job - your job as a manager is to help them frame what constitutes a “good” job.
3. Don’t watch people work, watch the results. do you really care how they work? Beyond making sure that their ethical, etc. no. Now, if there’s a process to doing something and that process is core to your business, then following the process becomes part of the “result” - so there’s an exception made for that sort of thing.

Then with your customers

1. Level with them. Air some of your dirty laundry - be genuine. They’ll appreciate it and trust you.
2. Provide outstanding customer service and ask for nothing in return, trusting that it will all come back to you in the end. Get paid for the value to provide, but this is the old adage of underpromise/overdeliver.

Welcome back again!