Overcoming 7 Barriers to Getting What You Want
All leaders want what they don’t have. Wrong wanting frustrates. Right wanting motivates.
Why leaders don’t get what they want?
- Failure to name it. You never achieve what you don’t name. Fear prevents leaders from saying what they really want.
- Neglecting the team. Too much time spent focused on reaching goals not enough focused on building people.
- Too many big goals not enough small. Successfully achieving several small goals builds confidence that big goals are possible. Reaching goals lengthens reach. Persistently falling short, shortens reach.
- Unrealistic expectations.
- Planning without follow through.
- Lack of direction and focus.
- Too much passion; not enough reason.
Get what you want by wanting the right things.
- The horses in the barn not your imagination identify the right things to want. Where can your team take the organization you lead? Want that! It’s foolish to go where your team can’t take you.
- Identify what you want by exploring what others want. What you want isn’t the only want. Aligned wants are achieved. Isolated wants cool and die.
- Adapt your wants to anticipated resources, plus a little. Did income increase by 4% last year? Adjust your wants by 6%. Did it decrease by 5% then decrease by 3%.
Get what you want by building the team. People never reach when failure seems certain.
- Build confidence by honoring skills, talents, and effort. Achievements are great but talent got you there.
- Motivate with achievable milestones.
- Establish stretch goals with, not for.
- Develop skill-sets that align with goals.
Bonus: Change the team.
Why don’t leaders get what they want?
How can leaders more frequently get what they want?
Dear Dan,
One reason why leaders do not get what they want is overconfidence. Sometimes people tend to think in their favor. They tend to overestimate their strength and develop overconfidence. This overconfidence inhibits effort. The second reason is gap between expectation and effort is huge. It means when expectation exceeds effort, it will minimize chance of success. I agree that realistic want is necessary. At the same time, we need to understand the limitation. We and system all have limitation. We can not expect anything and make effort to achieve it. So, knowing limitation makes want achievable.
I also believe that like excessive passion, overambitious is the dangerous situation. Anyone developing this condition tend to become obsessed.And it leads to frustration and disappointment in case of non achievement.
I believe that knowing strength, limitation and realistic goal make leaders to achieve what they want.
I think leaders get what they want more often is summed up by follow through. Follow through on your vision and what it means to everyone. Follow through on the steps, big and little to make it happen; are they happening, are they yielding the ecpected results, if not, why not and what to do differently. Follow through on support of the other members of the team. And follow through on celebration- again great and small and the people who made it happen.
You can only get what you want if you keep a kind of scorecard (moving toward or away from the goal), know your destination and be part of the team.
Dan, you are right. In a project what we decide to get done is in scope. Everything else isn’t. Too often we leave what we want for ourselves and our team out of scope. We get stuff done but we don’t do what we need. We don’t describe it, ask for it, or break it down into doable actions. Good post.
Glenn
Leadership is basically simple. To be a leader, you need followers. Leave the followers out of your plans, you’l find yourself alone and short of your goal. If you fail to understand your team, you will fail to achieve. So basic! So true!
Leaders need to communicate their vision; and in doing so make it a vision that others can not only see, but also believe in and champion as well. When communicating something like this, it’s a presentation or a sales pitch. It’s not about the presenter – it’s about the audience, conveying that idea to the audience, and making it resonate with them.
WHat about selfish achievement like a Stalin like figure in the system that only takes and not contributes…totally self absorbed….but knows how to operate in the politics …achieves a position where his knowledge of the system (certain peoples closets) now makes him mostly untouchable. The system (the real contributors) suffers from this lack of leadership that includes even bullying…in order to steal others efforts so he can appear to be “the great and only one”.
What we have only gets better through absorbing the environment –understand the people and the things; take good care of the people and remain flexibility to leverage chnages.
The focus of this post is “overcoming the barriers”, which is in direct result of the lack of buy in by the entire team and most importantly the “leader”.
Far too often…leadership is viewed as a position or something negative that has been abused. While its true that certain positions place us in “leadership roles”, this is far from realizing what it means to be a leader. The problem is a simple one…leaders are servants who coordinate people, tasks and time to achieve the desired results. Until we redifine the “job description” of leadership the problems will always remain.