This week’s blog is inspired by Mark Fritz and his weekly quotes in leadership. Recently Mark stated:
“Leadership is influence, and the consistency of our behaviours is what keeps our influence with others high. However, the hardest person to influence is ourselves, as we often ask ourselves “Why am I not able to do it?”. Successful leaders understand that the foundation of their success is built by leading themselves first”.
This statement really made me think as I resonated with it so much. Horses are always looking for a leader to take care of them. Let’s face it being a leader is tough, and few want to do it when others are willing to assume that mantel. However, what is really interesting is that whilst a horse is happy to be a follower he will only remain in that role if he knows the leader is competent and making sound decisions. The minute the leader demonstrates poor decision making and acts in an indecisive way, the horse is forced to take over the leadership role in order to keep himself safe.
This has so many implications for organisations as unlike my horses, employees in organisations cannot assume the leadership role if their boss lacks leadership style. Rather they are forced to stay and keep on operating in the same way, despite the fact they are aware of serious leadership flaws. This made me wonder how those employees feel. I suspect they lack trust in their leader and in fact often get disheartened believing that they could do a better job. How demoralising and demotivating that must be.
The Peter Principle states that:
“We are promoted to our level of incompetence”
So given this fact there must be an awful lot of leaders in business today that are not really happy in that role. In my opinion these “uncomfortable” leaders often lack the charisma and ability to earn respect and instil trust in their teams. What a tragedy this is and for what it is worth in my view many of these people lack these essential management skills as they can’t apply them to their own lives. In my observations of successful leaders these are the ones that have a real focus, desire and passion. They know what they want in their lives and this drive is infectious. It rallies people to support them and as such their tribe grows and grows. They lead by example with passion and committment. They understand that real leaders can’t lead others until they can lead themselves.
Are you leading yourself, the hardest person, or are you letting life lead you. Leadership is not for the faint-hearted. Step up to the mark and claim your power and get a tribe of people following you. Just like my horses want to follow me.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
