Leadership – your legacy
It doesn’t mean you are old – legacy. What leadership legacy do you want to leave? What kind of leader you do want to be? What do you want to be remembered for?
When I think about Legacy I think about leaders that I have had in my career. Which ones have inspired me and which one disappointed me. I use this to work out what kind of leader I want to be. How about you?
Words that I want around my leadership:
Strong
Decisive
Quick to respond
Caring
Challenging
Outside comfort zone
I want to be a strong decisive leader that is focusing on the greater good of the organisation and team. Sometimes this requires you to make hard decisions but you do it for the greater good. I want to encourage, challenge my people and get them outside their comfort zone to do bigger things and know that I have there back. My role is to bring out the best in people, team and organisation and this is about finding the people to invest in and the people to manage out/exit.
Great leadership will not make you popular but it will make you respected. No one wants to be unpopular but as a leaders if you are too focused on making people like you and not upsetting people you will likely be an average leader at best. You have to make the hard decisions – you need to take people on the journey. Change management is not a person/role it’s the way leaders take the team on the journey.
Leadership is a journey – you need to fail to learn and be the best leader you can be. It’s a decision every day, it’s being honest when you get it wrong and it’s having another go the next day – it’s being resilient.
There have been a number of leaders that I have admired in my career – David McGregor from EY, David Thodey from Telstra. These leaders taught me about finding your way, being your authentic self, there is no perfect way but find your way. It is such good advice.
I have learnt just as much from the leaders I haven’t respected and it’s made me realise on the leader I don’t want to be – selfish, focused on individual gain and not taking a strong stance on unacceptable performance.
I love to learn from leaders; what works for them, what doesn’t and what they have learnt on their journey. The highlight of my week to do the Chiefs podcast focused on getting lessons and learnings from a range of different leaders. Tune in …we should add in link.
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Article by Jo Hands, Founder Whiteark
