It is all about understanding what you really believe and aligning all of your actions around bringing that reality to life.
Without ferocious resolve many people give up during hardships, challenges, and obstacles before achieving their dreams.
Ferocious resolve is like a hunger that cannot be satisfied without achieving dreams, goals, and outcomes.
Jim Collins, author of Good To Great, discovered that the good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.
Collins wrote that, “It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.”
Which comes first, great leadership or ferocious resolve?
I believe it is ferocious resolve which transforms normal people into great leaders.
During times of difficulty and danger we are all faced with a choice…to run towards the danger or away from it?
Leaders are typically motivated by one of two things: rewards or service. During tough times the former often shy away from difficulty and danger, opting for self-preservation, while the latter think of others first and run toward the danger.
Great leaders like first responders and other patriots are refined and defined during times of stress, uncertainty, difficulty, and danger. They are usually found to be the ones running towards a challenging situation with courage in spite of any fear or inferiority they may be feeling.
Goldsmiths have known the secret to refining pure gold for a long time…simply expose it to a blazing fire and the impurities naturally separate from the gold. In a similar manner, difficult situations, like blazing fires, have a way of refining leaders.
When the danger passes the kind of leader we are will be evident to all. Our actions during times of danger will refine us and the impact of our future actions will be forever affected, either positively or negatively.
Leadership is a choice. How will you respond during difficult situations? Will you be frozen by fear or run away to protect yourself? Or, will you rise to the occasion and run towards the danger and be forever changed by it?
Why are you in, or aspiring to be in, a leadership position? What is your motive [motivation]? Do you know? Are you willing to acknowledge it?
Many people strive to become ‘leaders’ for the accolades and rewards that come with the position, but abdicate the responsibilities that also come with the position.
What makes for a great leader is somebody who is not only clear why they want to lead, but when their motive for leading is to enrich the lives of others before enriching their own.
Patrick Lencioni’s latest book, The Motive, helps current and aspiring leaders to wrestle with the question of why they want to lead. And once they are clear about their motive they can make better choices, including whether a leadership role is truly what is best for them and the people they lead.
Lencioni suggests that at the most fundamental level, there are only two motives that drive people to become leaders. First, they want to serve others, to do whatever is necessary to bring about something good for the people they lead. Second—the all-too-common but invalid one—is that they want to be rewarded. They see leadership as the prize for years of hard work and are drawn by its trappings: attention, status, power, and money.
Lencioni stresses that when leaders are motivated by personal reward, they will avoid the unpleasant situations and activities that leadership requires. Reward-centered leaders operate under the assumption that their role should be convenient and enjoyable—so they delegate, abdicate, or ignore situations that only the leader can address, leaving a painful and destructive vacuum.
On the other hand, responsibility-centered leaders believe that being a leader is a responsibility; therefore, the experience of leading should be difficult and challenging (though certainly not without elements of personal gratification and fulfillment).
In The Motive Lencioni suggests that the omission of one or all of the following responsibilities of leaders may be an indication of an improper motive for leading:
Developing the Leadership Team
Managing Subordinates (and Making Them Manage Theirs)
Having Difficult and Uncomfortable Conversations
Running Great Team Meetings
Communicating Constantly and Repetitively to Employees.
I encourage you to read The Motive before reading any other book on leadership. Until you are clear and resolved around your motive for leading it will be difficult, if not impossible, to become a great leader!
Flourishing is one of the most important and promising topics studied in positive psychology. Not only does it relate to many other positive concepts, it holds the key to improving the quality of life for people around the world. Discovering the pieces to the flourishing puzzle and learning how to effectively apply research findings to real life has tremendous implications for the way we live, love, and relate to one another.
Flourishing moves beyond the confines of simple happiness or well-being; it encompasses a wide range of positive psychological constructs and offers a more holistic perspective on what it means to feel well and happy.
Great leaders are intentional about providing the following nourishments to foster an environment in which their teams are better able to flourish:
Expand and enhance social support systems. They help team members make new friends and deepen existing relationships within the team.
Provide opportunities to experience the good in life. Plan fun, exciting, meaningful, and fulfilling events for your team. Set goals for reaching milestones and savor the experience when you achieve those milestones.
Focus on having more fun! Schedule opportunities to simply enjoy life’s pleasures once in a while. Plan a trip, go out for a nice dinner, or book a fun activity for the team. Do whatever it takes to smile more, laugh more, and enjoy each other more.
Enhance a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Agree on what you value most and commit to keeping these values in focus as you work, learn, love, and live. Do things that are fulfilling. Make sure you are living a life that is authentic to your values.
In addition, there are five general qualities that great leaders are diligent to develop in the work environment of their teams:
The ability to direct and re-direct attention.
Just as we must carefully manage our time and our financial resources, we should also carefully manage our attention. Attention that is focused towards worrying, fretting, anger, revenge, and sadness is generally wasted attention; instead, focus your attention on analysis, imagination, investigation, compassion, and growth.
The ability to shape time with intention and for impact.
We all have to deal with constraints and barriers due to lack of time, but we don’t have to throw our hands into the air and admit defeat; instead, we can consciously choose to apply our time wisely and avoid wasting it on activities that do not bring us joy or move us closer to our goals.
The practice of constant improvement.
Those who flourish do so not because they are “natural flourishers” but because they are constantly finding ways to improve, develop, and grow. They do not settle for the status quo; they find out what they need to know and what they need to do to and work hard to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to get them where they want to go.
The ability to communicate and listen to others.
Soliciting feedback from others is vital to just about every human endeavor, and flourishing is no different. It’s tough to evaluate ourselves, so we should consider ourselves lucky for every single person who is willing to provide honest information on ourselves and our efforts. Those who flourish do so, in part, because they are willing to listen to others, learn from them, and take advice.
The commitment to positive experiences.
If we want to flourish, we must open ourselves up to experiencing all the good that life has to offer. We must commit to experiencing joy and delight, to finding meaning and purpose, and to offering ourselves what we need to remain healthy and happy.
The great thing about creating a nourishing environment is that it not only allows the team to flourish, but the leader as well.
Jack Welch (1935-March 1, 2020) the only child of a railroad conductor from Peabody, MA attributed his success to his mother, Grace, who he regularly called the most influential person in his life.
Grace Welch invested in her son both with love and tough love and left a powerful and positive legacy of her own. “Grace Welch taught me the value of competition, just as she taught me the pleasure of winning and the need to take defeat in stride.”
Jack Welch wrote in his memoir. “If I have any leadership style, a way of getting the best out of people, I owe it to her. Tough and aggressive, warm and generous, she was a great judge of character. She always had opinions of the people she met. She could ‘smell a phony a mile away.’”
“The insights she drilled into me never faded,” he recalled. “She always insisted on facing the facts of a situation. One of her favorite expressions was ‘Don’t kid yourself. That’s the way it is.’”
“Perhaps the greatest single gift she gave me was self-confidence,” Welch reminisced. “It’s what I’ve looked for and tried to build in every executive who has ever worked with me. Confidence gives you courage and extends your reach. It lets you take greater risks and achieve far more than you ever thought possible. Building self-confidence in others is a huge part of leadership. It comes from providing opportunities and challenges for people to do things they never imagined they could do—rewarding them after each success in every way possible.”
Every organization has a culture, whether positive or negative. In the same context every leader will leave a legacy, whether positive or negative, memorable or forgotten, impactful or dispassionate.
Since authenticity is another attribute of great leaders, positive, impactful, and memorable legacies are not something that can be conjured up. Like the cultures that they create during their life, positive, impactful, and memorable legacies are the byproduct of great leaders simply living their values.
That does not mean that a leader cannot be intentional about their behaviors during their life. Quite the opposite, it’s the intentionality of the leader as it relates to their behaviors that allows them to create both positive, impactful, and memorablecultures and legacies.
The preface from a book in The Ken Blanchard Series on Leadership suggests that whatever your position, if you influence change in the lives of those around you, you are engaged in an act of leadership. And if you are a leader in any sense, you are creating a legacy as you live your daily life. That legacy is the sum total of the difference you make in the lives of others.
Will you consciously craft your legacy or simply leave it up to chance? nbsp; Through an insightful parable Your Leadership Legacy shows how to create a positive, empowering legacy that will endure and inspire. You’ll learn that, as a leader, the legacy you live is the legacy you leave. Three Leadership Imperatives: dare to be a person, not a position, dare to connect and dare to drive the dream, will guide you in creating a positive and lasting legacy.
According to Inc (https://www.inc.com/ben-fanning/5-ways-the-best-leaders-leave-unforgettable-legacies.html) most leaders do not leave legacies and they are never mentioned again when they leave an organization. Others leave negative legacies and are usually fired in the process. But others leave powerful legacies hat live on for years, continuing to make positive impacts in staff meetings, presentations, and even at the water cooler.
So, how do you leave a positive, impactful, and memorable legacy?
The Inc article, referenced above, suggests there are five things leaders can be intentional about to affect the legacy they leave:
Prioritize people over results
Invest your time and money
Connect in person
Control less; empower more
Model behavior you want to last
Great Leaders start each day by asking themselves “what kind of legacy do I want to leave today?”
