Leadership Is Empowering Others

Leadership is empowering others to reach for their full potential. In Brian Tracy’s “The Treasury of Quotes,” he describes leadership as “… the ability to get extraordinary achievement from ordinary people.”

No one ever gets to the top alone. It takes the combined efforts of several for anyone to reach the top. In order to be a leader, you naturally must have followers. We do not succeed without sacrifice; it is either our own sacrifice or the sacrifice of others which brings a leader to the top. Leadership implies that the leader has not only personally achieved goals but also knows how to guide others to achieve their goals.

As a leader, there are a few questions which are always in the forefront of my mind.

What things do you feel that I am doing right?

What could I do to be an even better leader?

What do you believe that I am not doing well?

Feedback is the food of champions. There are usually three different realities for a leader. There is the leader’s view of each situation. There is the follower’s (team member) view of each situation. The truth or actual facts are frequently somewhere in between the two. We each see things through our own lens. Our view is tainted by our own experience and our perception. When we brush away the interpretations and expose the facts, it can be an entirely different reality.

If an employee is not happy with their supervisor, they may tell other employees, their friends, their family and perhaps even the ladies at the nail salon or the boys at the bar. The only one who does not know is the supervisor. Unfortunately, the supervisor is the only one who can make it better.

The leader, supervisor, can ask employees to rate their satisfaction with the company culture and their employee status on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being excellent. If the rating comes back as a 7, all the leader knows is that the employee is not totally happy. If the leader follows up with the next question, “What will it take to make it a 10,” then there is solid information to improve the situation.

Feedback not only helps the leader but it clarifies for the employee as well.

No one gets to the top alone. The wise leader brings others up to the top with them. A true leader never allows ego or insecurity to push others down in order to keep themselves on top. The old expression, “it’s lonely at the top” has no merit when the wise leader brings others up to the top with them. At that point, the top is never lonely.