Tuesday, March 24, 2009

25 Lessons in High Performance Leadership

Lesson Twenty-five
Be an Island of Excellence

After speaking to an audience, I had a manager come to me and say, "Danny, I really want to grow and develop as a leader but the managers at all levels above me certainly don't. What can I do?" I gave this individual two bits of advice. One is that you can't change anyone or anything above you on the food chain. You can't manage the organization above your level, so don't even try.

The second nugget I passed along came from Joe Topper, who was in the audience I had just spoken to. He explained that, because he couldn't do much about changing anyone above him, he had decided to become an island of excellence within his sphere of influence. He would get so good at what he was doing that something great was bound to happen. That's the spirit! That's what I'm talking about!

No one is as interested in your career or your future as you are. Take the responsibility of becoming an island of excellence within your present company no matter what anyone else is doing. This will pay off for you in three ways:

• First, you will become more valuable to your present company. Perhaps even to the point of them considering you indispensable. A sustained high performance record of accomplishment can buy a bright future for you and your family.

• Second, the better you get at producing results, the more valuable you become to the competition. You are number one. You need to look after yourself and your family. If your employer won't compensate you for what you're worth, a proven record of accomplishment through sound leadership is valuable on the job market.

• Finally, there might come a time when you want to strike out on your own. Every time you learn and improve as a leader, you become more skilled as an entrepreneur. The more skilled you are as an entrepreneur the better your chances of succeeding on your own.

The ultimate threat to our future is stagnation. Continued personal and professional growth is essential to a tomorrow that will be better than today. The managerial moment of truth comes when you realize that, as the leader, you are the trigger for change in and for the organization. The people in the organization will pay the price in time, energy, and money to grow and develop in their jobs as they see you do the same as their leader. The adaptability that will prepare you for tomorrow’s leadership challenge is anchored in your personal uncompromising integrity and the other leadership qualities to which you aspire. Looking back over the past ten or twenty years, it's easy to see that the leadership challenges of tomorrow never get any easier.

Here are three things to make you the best leader you can be:

Keep an eye on the future, your own and your organization's.

Never stop doing whatever it takes to keep growing as a leader.

Always keep the growth and development of your team members as your top priority.

"Some of the world's greatest achievements were made by those who were self-instructed."

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