M-O-M Spells “Leader” :A Six Part Series for Leadership Success
Step 1: People
Martin Luther King Jr., Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jordan, Ronald Reagan, and even Adolf Hitler: all excellent examples of great leaders. These are men and women able to inspire others to follow – not because they have to, but because they want to. And yet, it’s sometimes hard to relate to leaders such as these. After all, what opportunity will I have to lead an NBA basketball team to victory or motivate a nation to change?
My leadership opportunities appear scrawny in comparison. I head up a small team at work, coordinate the occasional birthday party or baby shower and cajole my son into doing his homework. I rally the troops on Saturday to clean up the house, and sometimes help out with a project at church.
Are my duties any less important? I hope not!
Should I reject the occasions I have to lead because they aren’t as large scale? No way!
Is it easier for me than those other, more prominent leaders? It sure isn’t.
We need the same skills to get our children to follow us through the grocery store without fighting over all the junk food as Martin Luther King Jr. needed to lead a nation to tolerance. And supervising a small group at work takes all the same skills as Hitler needed to stimulate his army in World War Two (and a LOT more diplomacy and inclusiveness than he demonstrated). Not to mention the fact that a person must crawl before they walk, and walk before they run, so if I were to ever have the opportunity to lead on a larger scale, I need to take advantage and learn from my current situation.
So, what are the essential leadership skills and how can we get them? Every leader has their own opinion as to the most important, but six areas continue to crop up as necessary attributes for success:
People
Preparation
Attitude
Confidence
Discipline
Courage
The first quality may not seem to be a skill as much as an ingredient for leadership. After all, it’s kind of hard to lead if there are no people available for it! But sadly, the ability to gather a brood of people around is no assurance that you’ll be able to motivate and inspire them once they are there.
I’ll never forget my Fifth Grade teacher although I can’t remember his name or anything he taught me that year. This man was the kind of teacher that would have made a good plumber. He was so ineffective at communicating his passion for academics that the entire class rallied behind him – while he was at the front of the room, we were behind him acting up worse than we ever had in the past!
One group of kids would create a distraction, and another group would follow up with something even worse. It all came to a head the day Dean, Kurt and David jumped out the window, walked back into the school and knocked on the locked door (the teacher had to lock it to keep kids from escaping his class). The teacher hadn’t even seen them leave the room.
Needless to say, I don’t remember a thing academically that I learned that year, and I will never consider him a great leader – but that nameless teacher didinstill in me the instinctive lesson that in order to get people to follow, you mustcommunicate your sense of purpose – your passion.
My son’s second grade teacher was awesome at this. At the pre-opening parent/student meeting last August, I looked around at the fidgety, rowdy second graders and said a quick prayer that my fifth grade experience would not be repeated. The kids showed absolutely no interest and to me it looked harder than herding cats to get those kids to learn anything important.
Mrs. Paulus pulled it off with grace. First, she got the buy in of the students by really getting to know each one – how they learned, their strengths, and their challenges. She did her best to individualize the lessons and make the students responsible for their own success – even going as far as to allow each child to choose their own spelling words each week!
Each lesson tied into the other lessons – if they studied bugs in science, their spelling words were all about insects, they read about bugs in Language Arts, counted ants in math and talked about exterminators in Social Sciences.
Mrs. Paulus gave the kids goals, and then made sure she met them. She made them each responsible for their own and the whole classe’s success, and held them accountable. She praised, she corrected with love, and she gave them respect. They knew she loved what she did, and they loved her in return.
My son’s class didn’t necessarily enter second grade convinced they needed to learn the lessons they did. Very often, a team doesn’t want to do what needs to be done. Rossalyn Carter has said: A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be.Mrs Paulus was such a great leader; excellent at conveying her sense of purpose – at saying “Follow me,” to the kids. They followed, not because they had to, but because they wanted to.
What are some of the specific “people” lessons we can learn from Mrs. Paulus and other great leaders? There are many:
1. Identify the goal you want to achieve. You can’t convey it to your people until you understand it fully yourself.
2. Be passionate about your aim – and be ready to share your passion and enthusiasm.
3. Really get to know your team. Identify their abilities, strengths, and challenges. See the good first, and use their strengths to help improve their weaknesses.
4. Immerse your team in the project. Make every task count, and make sure they are all connected to the main goal in a way that the team can understand. If you’re goal is bugs, make it all about bugs!
5. Make your team accountable for success. Make sure each team member is responsible for their own duties, as well as keeping the other team members on track to achieve the goal. Don’t be afraid to appropriately discipline, and remember to always search out the opportunity to praise.
6. Ask, don’t tell. Team members buy in to a project much more when they are asked to buy into it. For example, instead of saying : You’re cleaning your room today, try: We need to clean the house today…would you like to work on your room or the family room?
7. Make sure you are giving the team the skills and tools that they need to succeed. Mrs. Paulus made sure her lessons were specific to the level of reading and reason her second graders could handle. You need to make sure that your team has the training or resources they need to complete the goal, as well.
A job that needs to get done, will eventually get done whether or not people are happy about doing it. Dwight D. Eisenhower has said: Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Successful leaders will agree. No matter how large or how small a task is, if leadership is needed the success of the team is the first priority. And respect, purpose and passion are excellent means to accomplish this goal.
Sue Dickinson is a mom, a business woman, and the founder of www.Unlimited Mom.com, a web site and e-newsletter designed to celebrate the many facets of Mom - her family, her work, and her personal development. Sue is also the author of the book: "What's a Mom to Do? Overcoming the Urge to Put Your Life on Hold", which can be purchased at unlimitedmom.com.
