The fine print on Leadership. (updated)
by blogrdoc“Leaders are made in a time of crisis” - Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett Packard Co
I’m a big fan of Robin Sharma’s philosophy of ‘Lead without title’. He’s a consultant/motivational speaker that has worked with many of the world’s largest corporations and he specializes in leadership development. Much of my ‘awakening’ is because I happened to stumble upon his website when I did a google search for ‘motivational podcasts’. The guy is absolutely brilliant.
(updated: I just re-found the link to Robin Sharma’s motivational podcasts: here )
His message is that everyone should be a leader. His “lead without title” slogan is everywhere on his website. I suspect that it is a catchy slogan because the exact opposite is what is observed in everyday life. This post touches on the “fine print” of Leadership.
In leading an organization (no matter how small), whenever the path forward is not obvious, here’s what the leader gets to deal with:
* Mental heavy-lifting in the form of: gathering and validating information, evaluating pros and cons, identifying key priorities, identifying which objectives will be sacrificed if necessary, creative problem solving.
* Balance of urgency and patience. During moments of crisis, time is of the essence, but you obviously don’t want to make a rushed decision.
* Dealing with the consequences. No elaboration required.
On my night shift last Friday, there was some product that looked questionable. It was up to me to decide what to do with it. I got 5 different opinions. I talked with the director of engineering who basically told me to not make a decision about it and wait till Tuesday. Some people said ’scrap it’, some people said ’ship it’. I have zero experience in even evaluating quality at this point in the process and, being the engineer on call that night, I get to make the decision.
Later in the night, I discovered a problem which may or may not be resulting in nearly a quarter-million dollars of mis-processed material. How does one proceed from that point?
This is the context of how I learn about leadership. In these cases, it’s so much easier to pass the buck and let someone else make the decision. It’s no wonder why leadership often is scarce.
Postscript:
I ended up not listening to the director of engineering and made a decision anyway ;)
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