Colin Powell on Leadership – A Challenge
Colin Powell on leadership topics is always good. I This one certainly caught my eye. It came from a Tweet from @lead2purpose. Let’s look.
The essence of leadership is holding your people to the highest possible standard while taking the best possible care of them.
He identifies a special tension. People at work also know that tension. Great leaders are way beyond trying to manipulate their direct hires to do more work.
People either must do work or want to do work. Which do you want?
So people wanting to do work is preeminent. Using must is way too much work as you have to watch them way more closely.
Manipulation quickly turns people away with a bad taste. What we need is to see that the right hires coming to work want to achieve something and have something to show for their efforts.
We are actually on the same team. However, people doing work want to be seen and valued. How do you do that?
Colin Powell on Leadership is Spot On
General Powell says to take the best possible care of them. We do our best for workers, and they do their best for us. Then, we are really a team. That is great leadership.
My favorite leadership saying is it is my job to facilitate the success of those working for me. General Powell adds a new flavor to that. We both realize that workers do much better work when they are engaged and empowered. Our job is to help them reach higher. They want that too.
So what of management hiring in China? Not a lot of focus or due diligence on leadership in China. Result is too much self serving and self protecting leadership while most people under them finally are just punching a time card. It does not have to be this way, and you certainly do not have to get lucky to get the great leaders.
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