Welcome back!
So far we’ve been talking about getting our own selves in order so that we don’t do damage to others and we give ourselves the best possible chances of success. We are arriving at the heart of this teaching series. Here’s the deal. Even if you’re a marvelously functional and mature adult, who does a remarkable job for your organization and is an upstanding member of your community, but you do not know how to properly take care of your team, you’ll create an epic failure for yourself. You’ll impose completely unnecessary hardship on every person under your command. So how do we get leadership right? By becoming awesome! Not by loafing our way through an endless series of handsome paychecks, or settling for mediocrity, or giving the status quo a place to flourish. We become awesome by being far above average impact players, a new generation of leadership who jabs a stick in the spokes of the out-of-control-bike of toxic workplaces and throws them over the handlebars to enact change. If you didn’t get into leadership with a clear intention to transform lives, organizations, and bottom line results, and you have no desire in your heart to achieve those outcomes now, then please do us all a favor and resign your post. There are too many ill-equipped people with characters that are completely unworthy of leadership seriously holding their organizations back from soaring success because they are in the way.
Specifically, becoming awesome means three things: interpersonal excellence, strategically developing others, and the art of consequences. Strap it up, and let’s get going!
Until next time, I’m praying that those of you who are hungry to be your best will have fun growing every day, and those of you stinking up leadership chairs will somehow find your way into an entirely different line of work!