the art of leading

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1. Never value your journey as a success.
People who consider the achievement of the ultimate goal as the only possible way to achieve success are perfect prospects to never be good leaders. It is a perfect way to fail as a leader. Leaders, naturally, are driven and desire to accomplish the realization of a vision. That is one of the things that characterize them. But they also are set apart because they see each step in the way to realization as a small success. If you never value your journey as a success, then you’ll end up being a very unhappy person, since you’ll have to wait a long time before you can know what ’success’ feels like.

2. Never delegate.
Successful leaders know how to delegate. So it follows that if you want to suck at leadership, you can’t delegate anything. If that’s what you want, just hoard every little detail inside your circle of responsiblity and forget about the big picture. If you try to do everything by yourself, you’ll end up with so much unimportant details that you won’t have any time or energy to dedicate to the really significant stuff such as…being a leader instead of a task administrator.

3. Never point out anything positive about the people who surround you.
This is the perfect way to sink into leadership hell. So if your goal is to be a bad leader, then you absolutely need to put this principle into play. In fact, a faster way to destroying relationships is to not only withhold compliments, but express negative comments about those who surround you. This will create resentment toward you, which means that they won’t want to follow you, or do anything that you want them to do.

4. Never consider leadership as a means.
Those who most frequently fail at the game of leadership are those who see it as a material object to be attained, instead of a means to attain something that is meaningful to society or a part of it. Successful leaders, on the other hand, get to practice leadership because they want to express themselves and their vision. They aren’t leaders just for the sake of being leaders.

5. Never think of leadership as a way to serve others.
This is a very important message to those who want to fail as leaders: just serve yourself. Become a leader out of mere self-interest and you’ll be well on your way to being a perfect failure as a leader. Great leaders have a purpose that is greater than themselves. Just do the opposite if you want to be their opposite.

6. Stump whoever is beneath you.
This is another great way to destroy your chances of failure. When you get to the “top”, just start taking those “beneath” you for granted. When you come crashing down in the future, nobody will be there to help you up, since you destroyed all those meaningful relationships with people who are now on “top” of you.

7. Never read, just watch reality shows over and over again.
Great leaders don’t stop learning. They read every type of book they can get their hands on, and take a critical point of view toward them, which will help them when analyzing real-world situations. They focus on books and even art and music that expand their critical and analytical capabilities. So, if you want to fail as a leader, it’s simple: watch every reality show out there. Those are perfect to kill your brain cells, since they not only don’t require you to think, but encourage you to be dumber. There is nothing better that you can do to decrease your critical and analytical abilities than listening to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears or some random dude talk about their dog’s nails.

8. Never mold your own environment.
If you want to do everything in your power to suck at leadership, let circumstances and your environment mold you . Truly successful leaders are those who see something they don’t like and strive to change it. They aren’t bogged down by petty day-to-day events. They go out and create their own set of favorable circumstances instead of letting the likes and wants of others destroy their visions.

9. Never fail.
This may be the most important principle to follow in your quest to leadership insignificance. True leaders come to see failures and mistakes as learning vehicles. In fact, they come to look forward to these situations, because they know that in every failure, they will find an equally significant or greater success. If you want to stay stuck at where you are right now, then don’t do anything differently. Don’t risk failing, since it will only bring you unlimited opportunities, and someone who would never want to be a leader would never want that.

Categories : Communication, Failure, General Leadership, Goals, Personal Development, Recognition, Relationships // 2 Comments »

Want short and sweet suggestions to deal with failure effectively? Read this post over at LeadershipJot.com, by Jonathan Frye.

3 Steps for How to Respond to Failure

Categories : Failure // Add Comment »

Entrepreneurs, almost by definition, are adventurous. They strive to make a business thrive in the marketplace. They want their ideas to stand out from all the other ideas that circulate in the marketplace.

But it’s almost a rule that entrepreneurs, as a result of their risk-taking attitudes, “fail” at one time or another. They may learn valuable lessons from those “failures”. Nevertheless they fail in the concrete business sense. Perhaps it just wasn’t the right time for the idea. Or maybe the business lacked long-term vision. There are endless possibilities for the bust.

Most, though, learn at least one important lesson from those failures: the importance of knowing to move on. They know, after several trial-and-error cycles, when they’re just wasting their time on something that simply won’t work.

They learn to trust their instincts, in that sense. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Haven’t those of you who are avid readers come to predict the quality of the books after reading just a couple of chapters? Surely many of you, after realizing that reading the rest of the book will be an utter waste of time, set it aside and read another book. Perhaps you come to a moment in time that feels more appropriate to read it.

The same happens in entrepreneurship, business, and leadership. Leaders sell ideas. They sell those ideas using different methods. Sometimes those ideas don’t gain ground. Sometimes the methods used to spread those ideas don’t actually spread them.

So what should a leader do when that happens?

Find another idea! Find another method! Recognize the failure in a timely manner, quit your energy-draining efforts, find a new idea or a new method, and try to make it work. Don’t waste your precious time on projects that you realize aren’t worth the time or effort.

Categories : Courage, Failure // Add Comment »

“Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader. He was a leader because he had the courage to fight for what he believed in, regardless of the obstacles that he faced. He knew that he would be subject to backlash.

He withstood jail, hate, criticism, threats, and death. He kept his back straight, vigilant of the next rock in his journey, but aware of the ultimate goal: equality. In this context he said what appears at the beginning of this article. He knew that if he bent his back, all the naysayers would pounce and try to go for the kill. They would try to ride his back. But he wasn’t willing to do that, because he knew what he wanted.

This doesn’t mean that he was stubborn. Perhaps he detoured, and certainly he had doubts about his vocation, as every human being does. But he didn’t bend his back.

As a leader, you should be prepared to be countered by many situations. But leaders are leaders because they are convinced of a vision, and are driven almost obsessively by that vision. This obsession is strong enough to ward off these obstacles. It permits you to face these obstacles with a straight back. That’s the only way that you can walk toward your goal.

Now, I’m not condoning “macho-ness”. Sensibility and tact are always valuable tools for the leader. But giving in, bending your back, will never get you to your proposed destination. You’ll be too worn out from all the weight you’ve carried.

Categories : Confidence, Courage, Failure, General Leadership, Goals // 2 Comments »

Picture yourself five years ago. What are your dreams? What are your goals? What are your plans? Are you pretty sure that you’re gonna’ reach them? How confident are you? Do you have your next five years planned out to perfection?

Now come back to the present. Did you actually reach them? To what extent? Of course, everything didn’t go exactly as planned. Maybe you achieved all your goals. Or maybe you simply stalled. Or maybe you have been hit by the storms of everyday life, as is normal.

That happens too. We think we’re Supermen or Superwomen and suddenly something happens to change our course. [Read more →]

Categories : Action, Change, Failure, General Leadership, Goals, Personal Development // 2 Comments »

Imagine a full-grown, 6′3″ 200 lb. man weeping like a baby. Doesn’t sound right, huh? Well that was me a couple of years ago. What made me cry for the first of two times in my life, you ask? In short, my Architecture Design 202 professor. Why? Well, that’s a somewhat longer story.

For those of you who don’t know, architecture is normally taught by critizicing. You draw a design, and a jury composed of architects trashes it. They tell you everything that is wrong with your design. They tell you how you were supposed to do better. They tell you what you can do to make it better.

But believe me, they don’t have to be nice about it. Some try to be tactful. Others just make you feel like you are the single most disgusting human being in this Planet Earth.

After this dehumanizing process, then it starts all over again. New drawing, new jury, same criticism, same professors trying to make you cry (many succeed, by the way).

Then you build the model. A group of professors gathers around you, in front of your peers, and criticize you, and trash your design, and…Well, you get the point.

So it turns out that my specific design for this class went through this same process 11 times in one semester, without counting the dozen or so informal meetings with my professor where he tore apart my model and used it as his little doll house.

The last day of the semester was here. [Read more →]

Categories : Failure, Relationships // 1 Comment »

Yesterday I talked about stupid people. Today I’ll talk about smart people. Both stupid and smart people hold strong to their beliefs. But the beliefs of stupid people are prejudicial and close-minded. The beliefs of smart people are well analyzed and open-minded.

The first step to being smart, as opposed to stupid, is to exercise your intelligence and adaptive capacity, which set you apart from ants and lizards. I told you how human beings are supposed to be “smart”. It isn’t too difficult. Just look for whatever caused you to screw up, fix it, and try not to repeat it.

Read and learn about different ways to attack the same problems. Explore and search for new answers to old questions. Make new questions. Fix old answers. Learn from your mistakes and apply those lessons. Accept your errors and amend them. Adapt to circumstances. Be open to change and criticism. All these are somewhat simplistic ways of being what human beings are supposed to be: smart.

Categories : Failure, General Leadership, Personal Development // Add Comment »

Just as imperfection makes us human, so does logical reasoning. When humans screw up, they normally look for whatever caused that screw-up, fix it, and try not to repeat it. That is what I consider a very elemental level of intelligence. That “mistake-recognition” skill also shows what many call adaptive capacity.

Other species in the animal kingdom, like ants and lizards, don’t have the capacity to go through this marvelous process. These other animals don’t learn from their mistakes; they just endlessly repeat them. They don’t recognize mistakes, and they aren’t able to adapt in the same logical way that human beings do.

Stupid people are very much like ants and lizards. But ants and lizards can be forgiven. Stupid people cannot. They’re human, and they’re supposed to have intelligence and adaptive capacity. They obviously make mistakes, as does everyone else. That makes everyone human, so that doesn’t make them particularly stupid.

What sets them apart from smart people is the fact that they don’t know if and when they have made a mistake. Furthermore, they don’t know what to do when they do make them. They deny their faults even when they know they are at fault.

They lack what ants and lizards lack too, which is logical reasoning. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you’ll keep screwing up over and over again. That is called being a stupid person.

Categories : Failure, Personal Development, Proactivity // 1 Comment »

The same thing told in different ways will be heard differently and have different effects. In a recent post (Who Needs Charisma?), I mentioned an article in the August/September 2007 issue of Scientific American MIND magazine (The New Psychology of Leadership). In that same issue, there is another extraordinary article which I want to refer to, since it has so much to do with persuasion. In When Words Decide, author Barry Schwartz describes how the wording of questions or choices have a shockingly deep effect on the final decisions of people. Some of what Schwartz says is pretty obvious information. But the article does provide some detailed tidbits that any leader should apply when trying to get his or her way. Here they are presented, along with suggestions on how to use them as a leader who wants to persuade

1. People normally choose the default option. It’s easier and they assume it’s best for them.
Tip: Use your preferred option as the default. It’s simpler and easier for people to do nothing. Provide an opt-out option instead of an opt-in option. For example, if you prefer that your employees have a 401-K plan, make it the default option, leaving the employees with the power of declining to have one by opting out.

2. People are more motivated to not lose something than to gain something. For some reason, the fear of negative things is more impacting to people than the possibility of gaining something.
Tip: Emphasize to people the negative characteristics of an option you are against (obviously) but do so in a way that motivates them to prevent loss. For example, if you are running a campaign to get people tested for HIV, tell them what will happen in the case of late detection (lose your life) instead of what they could gain in case of early detection (more effective treatment).

3. People pick the most favorable of two options, but if given only one option they don’t have anything to compare to. If you ask people if $100 is a fair price for a microwave, their answers will be inconsistent. If on the other hand, you present people with that same microwave and ask them if the new $500 “Premium” microwave is a better offer, most would see the first one as the best choice.
Tip: Give people a specific context to work with. Make your preferred option the most favorable of two options, even if it’s less favorable than a third unnamed option. In other words, provide a field of comparison when trying to persuade.

For clarification and further helpful examples, go to the complete article:

Scientific American Mind: When Words Decide
Researchers are discovering the myriad ways in which
language can have a profound effect on the choices we make–from the foods we eat to the laws we support

Categories : Failure, Mentorship, Recognition, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Persuasion, which is what leadership centers on, many times takes place in a negotiation environment. Each time you persuade your counter-party to do something, you may be considered to have achieved a victory for you or your organization. The best situation to be in and strive for is the one where all parties have “won” in their own ways. This is something that Stephen Covey, in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Roger Fisher and William Ury, in Getting to Yes, talk about expansively. Covey calls it the “win-win or no-deal” philosophy.

But still, there are moments where leaders may be advised to grant less importance to “winning” than normal. I’m not saying you should necessarily lose on purpose, but under these circumstances, losing may not be totally negative. These are the moments that I consider to be the most appropriate for “losing”:

1. Relationship is more important than the issue - Do not fight your victory when the loss of the relationship with the counter-party is bigger than that victory. You may get to enforce that contract with your client through litigation, but that may mean the loss of your biggest client in the future. After all, leadership is based on relationships.

2. Winning will require you to violate your principles and values - Principled negotiation is not utopian. I believe that it is very possible indeed to win in a negotiation while still maintaining the basic principles you value the most in your life. If you have to violate your own integrity to win, it’s best not to.

3. Losing here will help you win later in a more important issue - Negotiations normally contain more than one issue, depending on their complexity. Carefully weigh the relevance of each one, and decide if “losing” on one will give you leverage to “win” on a more significant one.

4. You just don’t care - This may be a dangerous situation. What is irrelevant to you may be relevant to someone else. But if the stakes involved are close to meaningless and there are more important things to think about, you have to consider the possibility of conceding. Fighting just for dignity when it isn’t worth it frequently creates an irrational and emotionally charged environment.

5. When it becomes apparent that no fair solution will be reached - More than losing the negotiation, this may be seen as not negotiating at all. The reason I included this is because sometimes mutual defeat for both parties is pretty certain from the beginning. In this case, just don’t waste your time.

Categories : Communication, Failure, General Leadership, Goals, Negotiation, Relationships // 2 Comments »