How to Reinvent Your Leadership
Every excuse to stay the same leads to drudgery and decay.
Inaction drains vitality. Dreams without action are sedatives.
The pursuit of excellence is the path to reinvent your leadership.
The greatest obstacle between you and the pursuit of excellence is you. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” Sir Edmund Hillary
3 reasons you don’t reinvent your leadership:
#1. The gap.
The gap between desire and fulfillment is the reason excellence is rare. The need for instant gratification is the reason you don’t have patience to reinvent your leadership.
A person who can’t tolerate the gap between desire and fulfillment grows weary with constant pursuit.
Excellence is always a dream to be chased, never a goal to be reached.
In Brave New World, the gap between desire and fulfillment is evil. The goal of evil government is providing instant gratification.
#2. Imagined obstacles.
Aspiration invites resistance. Reasons to stay the same bubble up when you imagine a new path.
Reflect on advantage when imagined disadvantages barge in.
#3. High expectations.
You don’t reinvent your leadership when high expectations paralyze. Set the bar high, but don’t fall in love with giant leaps.
The moment you stop pursuing excellence is the moment mediocrity takes over. The seductions of comfort make mediocrity enjoyable.
A simple question to reinvent your leadership:
Reinvent your leadership by asking, “What is more excellent?”
What is more excellent? Watching Netflix after dinner or reading a book?
What is more excellent? Ruminating or designing solutions?
What is more excellent? Serving yourself or doing something useful for others? I’ve never heard a eulogy that began, “He always put himself ahead of others.”
Reinvent your leadership because half-assed and half-done insult your worth.
What blocks reinvention?
What helps you reinvent?
Still curious:
How to Live Up to Your Aspiration – Not Down to Your Disappointment
Great post. Simply great.
Thank you Linda. Cheers!
The word “reinvent” seems so big and all encompassing that people often don’t know where to start. Maybe start by focusing on one change you will make to be a more effective leader. And find a colleague who’s working on improving his/her leadership. Share what you are doing, check in on a regular basis, and learn from each other.
That’s wonderful insight Paul. Going-with is much better than going-alone.
Excellent thoughts. This is definitely one for the team. I’ll be sharing it in my next staff meeting. We have a great team but excellence is seen as a goal to be reached and once you have arrived the whole purpose is to maintain that level. This stifles creativity and causes us to miss opportunities.
Thanks Tom. You are so right. Excellence is never fully attained. Maintenance on any meaningful goal becomes stagnation eventually.
Reinvent, set new goals, plan then achieve! We all love to achieve, maybe to much at times.
I would add in another reason we will call it 2.5. Virtual Obstacles. Virtual team filing systems. Most of us work in them everyday. I equate it to working in each others junk drawer.
So before we reinvent our next project. Let’s get the launch pad ready by organize our teams junk drawer to overcome the 2.5 Virtual Obstacles.
For those who may need or know some team members who might benefit from a 12 step program for organizing, Google it.
Thanks for adding value to the conversation Arthur. The virtual dimension needs to be part of most conversations about obstacles and advantages.