The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

Ten Leadership "Points to Ponder"

No scheme for making you successful - even your own - comes with an iron-clad guarantee. The reason is simple. The only person who can make you successful in a venture such as becoming extraordinary is you. Your personal mental and emotional resources may be superior, or not. Your timing may be fortuitous, or not. Your people may be better equipped, or not. If your business or personal strategies are wrong - forget it.

Good fortune favors the best prepared. That's accomplishable for those who are incorrigibly determined - and willing to pay the price. And a large part of that price is how you think about the things that make a difference.

Are you a true leader? If so, here are ten points you might like to ponder.

1. Habits take you where they are headed, not where you "want to" go.
2. Habits of thinking determine habits of seeing and doing.
3. If you can't tell your story compellingly, you don't have one.
4. Knowing about is not the same as knowing how.
5. Leaders don't depend on what is known. They depend on what can be done with what is known.
6. Outcomes are never linear.
7. Either be the source of change, or the victim of it.
8. Change has to be made possible, and then necessary.
9. Where their cause is a stake, leaders have to be capable of being ruthless.
10. We all need someone to make us do what we ought to do. Who?

I invite your comments.

Think About Your Role as a Leader

Think about your role as a leader. It does hinge profoundly on how the would-be leader thinks about things, doesn't it? The leader understands this: As we think, so we will be.

The leader knows that leadership is not a characteristic of a person. It is a role that needs playing in a story that needs writing. If it isn't the leader's story that gets written, the leader knows that it will be someone else's story, and that he or she will be no more than a bit player in those other stories.

It is only when this kind of outcome is intolerable that the irresistible desire to lead gets born. The leader knows that leadership, being a role that needs to be played, is, metaphorically, a performing art. How the would-be leader plays that role will determine whether or not there are followers, and thus whether that leader's aims make a difference...or not.

It may be that "All the world's a stage," but the only one that matters is the one on which you appear. And upon how well prepared you are for that role.

• Being prepared in a way of thinking that makes a difference.
• Being unconventional
• Thinking in a way that powers your performance.

The leader understands people better than most. The leader understands, for example, that if you want to know how a person really wants to live, you look at the way that person lives. And if you want to know what people mean by what they say, observe what they do.

What Leaders Know About "Change."

Change has become a perennial issue. It has become so popular, it functions like a "mantra" - people frequently mouth or pen the term - but it has ceased to mean much more than suggesting that the speaker or writer is "with it." Here's what true leaders know about change. Leaders know:

• Things are changing all the time.
• Most of the changes that swirl around us are not within our control.
• Who people are - because that is a function of a whole bundle of habits exercised every moment of every day - is a primary source of resistance to change. We will most likely be tomorrow what we are today. And for that to happen, the world tomorrow has to be reasonably like is today.
• That to attempt to change the world - which would require people to change - is the most dangerous and uncertain undertaking there is.
• That it is the appeal of the alternative leaders describe, that makes any significant change possible.
• Change won't occur unless it is necessary.
• That systems in which people are embedded are fiercely resistant to change because they are tacit, accessible only by habits of belief.

Leaders understand that they are wholly interdependent with the forces that resist change, and with the forces that enable change. All this because leaders don't make change. They midwife it.

Leadership - Creating the Habits That Make a Difference

Behind, under, and before every perception, every feeling, every decision and every action, there are habits. Habits of mind, habits of perception, habits of feeling, and habits of action and reaction. In short, the first and last leadership lesson is this:

We are led by our habits - of feeling, of thinking, of perceiving, and of understanding.

Get those right, and everything beyond becomes possible. Get those wrong, and the outcomes will always be something you didn't choose.

A leader knows that people do not choose their trajectories through life. How we live and maneuver through life is not something we can have simply by choosing it. It is our habits that drive the way we think, feel, do and say. We cannot choose our ways of being and doing. But...what we can choose are the habits that inform our perceptions, our thinking and our feelings. What makes the leader different is that he or she depends upon the habits chosen and developed to drive the direction and the outcomes of life. You can't get what you "want." You can only get what your habits can deliver.

What characterizes the leader is his or her mental models, the heuristics used to assess the world and the strategies for undertaking his or her cause in that world. It is the unique, unconventional habits of thought, feeling, and action that underwrites the leader's success in his or her endeavor.

The Elusive Laws of Communication - Excerpts From Chapter 13

A great many executives assume that when they are talking or writing to someone, they are "communicating." And when they're not engaged in those activities, they are not involved in communication. They would be wrong.

The rule of thumb here requires a bit of thought. It is this: You cannot, not communicate. What this means is that people are watching you and talking about you all the time. If they are expecting you to say something to them, and you don't, you are "communicating" loudly. This is because it is the receiver who interprets the message. And the receiver can make that message out of nothing - out of silence even.

People have to guess what things mean. Even if you say "And what I mean by that is this.," they still have to guess what you really meant by what you said - or what you didn't say. All meaning comes from the mind of the beholder. And beholders are all predisposed to interpret one way or the other - by their beliefs, their fears, by the very ambiguity of what's going on - or what isn't.

What people make of you and of what they interpret to be going on is the reality you need to be tuned into. Facts don't move people. Their interpretations do. You do not and cannot control their interpretations. But you can tune into them. It's the only way you will know what's really going on.

People are "reading" you and checking their interpretations with other like-minded people all the time. What you "intended" is largely beside the point. What they "got" (by making it up if necessary) is the point. Effective leaders stay on point.