On ‘dealing’ with initiative and passion

To be successful as a leader, it’s important to be able to let go.

Ideas won’t always come from your mouth. Your ego might have to take a hit or two.

To fully leverage your team members’ varied skillsets and point-of-views, you have to be able to get out-of-the-way and let creativity run its course.

If you’re getting initiative from your team, it means you have passion. If you’re getting passion, it means you have commitment.

It’s a good thing. Once you get over the threatening unexpectability of it, you’ll realize that it’s a pretty good position to be in.

Trust your team, their passion and their initiative. If you’re ever uncomfortable, ask yourself:

What does that person’s initiative really take away from me?

Chances are, the answer is: nothing.

Who’s on your A team?

At some point, for a manager or for yourself, you’ll have to hire or build a team. If you haven’t been taking notes, it will be hard finding great fits.

2, 3, 4, 5 interviews might not give you the answers having worked with someone would. You might end up with great hires or you might not.

The best way around this is to start building your A team as early as possible. You might not be able to recruit them in the next 5 years but, if you’ve worked with them, you know what to expect.

If nothing else, being able to surround yourself with high performers makes you invaluable. Take notes of people you’d like to work with again, note where they’re heading and what they can bring to the table. Hiring or not, it’s a good thing to do.

So, who’s on your A-list? On who’s A-list are you?

What you were is what you are

What do Ralph Macchio and Mark Hamill have in common?

Answer: Both were huge early successes before getting typecasted (Think Karate Kid and Star Wars) and almost never acting again.

Turns out, the way people initially perceive your skills stains the opportunities you get later on.

In large companies, where you start is often an indication of where you’ll end. Businesses often have a positive bias towards hiring outside talent. Because companies prefer hiring from outside than promoting employees, jumping from one business to another is often the best way to raise in the hierarchy.

Managers use few points of reference to predict how you’ll evolve. They’re not in your head, they don’t know what else you think about.

Don’t be a one-trick pony. How can you give your colleagues more reference points to assess your skills and potential?

Bring out the pain

Typical project management theory suggests that project managers make conflicts appear as early as possible at the start of projects.

It might be counter-intuitive to seek problems and conflict but, a little pain early on certainly beats a lot of pain when you’re neck-deep in a project.

Benefits of making conflicts appear early on can be:

• Fixing issues before they blow up
• Planning a little better
• Anticipating concerns by understanding people’s priorities
• Knowing what to keep an eye out for
• Not committing too much if things are bound to implode

Good project management advice but, also good partnership, relationship, life and team building advice…

Inflated bubbles burst

When I started University, I was impressed at how often some people had things to say in class. As I started really listening and getting to know the people, I realized that the loudest voices were rarely the wisest voices.

I wouldn’t have thought that this stayed pass University but, turns out, the market is also like that. Some people and businesses we hear about, others we don’t.

But, there’s only 2 main types of people who can really talk about you: peers (colleagues, reviewers, etc) and customers.

Although it’s always great when peers recognize the value and quality of your work, if customers don’t talk (or care) about you, your bubble will burst.

Many businesses focus on the wrong things (how much money a peer gave them, industry reviews, etc) but, even if that helps, you can be successful without peer approval but cannot without customer approval.

Focus on the right things, inflated bubbles eventually burst.

On partnerships

Recently, I’ve been following my own advice and testing a possible business partnership. Through weeks of collaboration, I realized that a business partner had to be these 4 things:

1. Passionate: It’s very hard to stay motivated when things don’t turn out the way you planned. The last thing you want is to have to manage your partner’s motivation on top of yours.
2. Mature: There will be plenty of disagreements along the way. Does your partner have the maturity to always do what’s best for the business and the relationship?
3. Complementary: There’s too much to do to be competing over tasks. It may be fun at first to always work together but, your partner should be focused on doing what he does best. And you, what you do best.
4. Talented: Talent and skills OR potential (great potential can also do the trick); you need to understand how your partners will grow. Will they make great partners or just very good employees (Octavian Mihai).

Finding the right partner is very difficult but, a great partner-fit is often worth more than a great business idea. Protect your partnership as you protect your business.

Discussion: What would you look for in a business partner?

Photo Credit: Hillary Manuel

It’s rarely only about succeeding

Focus on the (learning) process, not the result.

For more than 2 years, Montreal head coach Jacques Martin (quote) has been repeating this sentence. It may have taken 30 times for it to sink in but, I finally understood what he was getting at.

Being fairly impatient – generally expecting immediate results – I realized that, if you focus on obtaining results from Day 1, your potential for success will be inferior to your potential if, from the start, you learn the rights things the right way.

Success is something you build up. You need to take steps to solidify your skills, credibility and relationships before you can expect results. Overnight success is not sustainable; it’s probably not what you’re after. Focus on the process before you focus on the results.

Note: A graphic could certainly illustrate this very well.

What leadership is not

It’s easy to get leadership confused.

If you’re a manager or are in a managing position you can call yourself a leader.

If you have charisma or are charismatic you can call yourself a leader.

If you’re an entrepreneur or are good at starting things you can also call yourself a leader.

But, even if these things can be part of what being a leader is, none of them make you a leader.

You can have the title, the presence and the initiative to lead but, ultimately, leadership is about who follows you and how much influence you have over them.

If people aren’t willing to follow you, you’re not much of a leader. Make sure you win people over before asking them to follow. Leading without influence is like pulling a dead horse to work… hard. ;)

Have you ever been positioned as a leader without the influence to lead?