10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership (part 6/10)

#6 of the 10 Things You Did Not Know About Leadership

LEADERSHIP IS NEVER LEARNED FROM A BOOK

Welcome to the sixth installment of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership. In this weekly, series I cover topics that tend to be overlooked, forgotten, or completely misunderstood. By sharing with you, it is my hope and belief that I help in eradicating many of the misconceptions that come with leadership.

As previously mentioned, there are countless books on Leadership (mine included). Those books are a tool, a guide but NEVER a substitution for doing. Books should always be used as a guide, a starting point but never the end all, be all. Books are never used as instead of getting out there and doing it, making it happen. So do not for one second believe there is that one book that will be the only book you will ever need when it comes to leadership. That one book should be a jumping off point for more books, ideas and concepts.

All current or future leaders, must always be expanding their knowledge, gaining experience, and thus increasing wisdom. Putting all your faith in just one book will never suffice. That one book should lead you towards expanding your horizons and thus reading more books, putting the lessons those books share into action. 

Let’s look at this from a different perspective when it comes to turning reading about things into doing those things. Currently, there are countless books, articles, and videos on how to start a campfire. While the how to start a campfire catalogue is near infinite, nothing and I do mean nothing will ever compare to starting a campfire. However, there are so many ways to start a fire, each has its purpose and process. Discover the other ways of starting a campfire.

Well, the same applies to knitting, jogging, and of course, Leadership. You can read and listen and watch but all that is moot until you are out there taking those steps to leading. Until you are out there dealing with those you are responsible for, until you are doing your part to accomplish the mission then will you be putting the words into action. 

In 1871 Helmuth von Moltke (Prussian Army Chief of Staff) wrote, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.” That same concept applies to reading about leadership versus trying to lead. 

When reading about any leadership concept or idea, in any book, know that the concepts or ideas are set in a perfect environment, with everything in its proper place and the responses and reactions are anticipated, expected and there is a solution for everything. Of course, as in battle and just like in life, nothing is ever perfect, nothing is ever in its proper place. Plans have a knack for going awry. 

Thus, it should serve as a warning that depending too much on the words written in any book without trying to put into practice what you have read. By practice, I mean, create situations of failure. As nothing is perfect and no matter if you read one book or thousands of books about leadership you will fail. However, by practicing to fail, the chances of actually failing, especially when it is time to put steel on target, will exponentially decrease. Remember, failing to prepare for that letdown will all but ensure no chance of success. 

One other thing to consider when it comes to putting what you read into action. Know that what you read should be taken with a grain of salt and will NOT work if you act on what you read word for word. Take your time to understand what you read before employing any tactic or strategy.

What you read will work or fail only when you get out there and DO! Then you will know. However, never for one second believe that because the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People| worked for Dr. Stephen Covey or “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” worked for John C. Maxwell, it will most certainly work for you.

It worked for them because they made change happen in their lives. They took what was there before them and made it unique to them. They did the homework. They saw that things were not happening and asked themselves what next. They went to work on themselves by figuring out what needed to be done to effectively answer the question of what next?

That is what prompted me to write The Walking Leader. I read about managing by walking around, MBWA if you will, but nowhere could I find how to do it. It was as if by magic or osmosis, people would just know how to get out there and do the MBWA thing. Not finding answers, I came up with the twenty rules or guide or principles to getting out from behind your desk and making things happen.

I put my unique spin on managing by walking around in The Walking Leader and you must put your own unique spin on what you have read, been taught, learned, and then get to work. Get to work on NEVER exactly copying anyone's leadership style. Again, what worked for Napoleon Hill, Tom Peters, Dale Carnegie, Patricia Thompson, and countless others will not work for you. I promise you that much. 

What will work for you is making your own leadership style and fine tuning it to suit your unique perspectives and situation. Take what all those books are sharing, the authors imparting their knowledge onto you. Take that knowledge and wisdom flip it, spin it, toss it around and make it your own. Then get to work.

Visit my website (daveguerra.com) to view this entry with its accompanying Audio/Visual media options.

Be sure to subscribe to get the next entry delivered to you via email.

Until Next Week, I Thank you.

David Guerra, MBA

P.S. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @daveguerra • visit my website: www.daveguerra.com

P.P.S. To order your copy of Great To Follow: Amazon paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble paperback
To order your copy of The Walking Leader:  Amazon Paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble

10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership (part 5/10)

#5 of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership

LEADERSHIP IS A LONG & ARDUOUS JOURNEY

Welcome to the fifth installment of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership. In this weekly, series I cover topics that tend to be overlooked, forgotten, or completely misunderstood. By sharing with you, it is my hope and belief that I help in eradicating many of the misconceptions that come with leadership.

No matter where you are on the path to leadership, one thing is certain; it is not going to be an easy journey. It will a long and arduous journey. They kind of journey that will test your mettle and will challenge you every step of the way. Count on it. 

The journey of a leader begins early in life and continues until the sun sets. Hopefully, someone will pick up the ball where we left off and run with it but more times than naught the ball sits where it lays. Sad but a harsh reality. However, not any sadder than the noise a tree makes when it falls in the forest. If no one is around, then no one knows it fell or that it made a sound along the way down.

The difficulty of the journey rest solely on you. Your positive attitude towards how you approach your leadership journey will not shorten it but it will make it better. Rest assured that if your attitude is anything less than positive your journey will be longer and even more arduous than it should have been. 

It is always about your attitude and your dedication to the commitment you made to be the best leader you can be. However, no one should be selling you on any kind of QUICK solution or EASY to follow steps to Leadership success. Charlatans, Snake oil salesmen, grifters, or whatever you want to call them because that is exactly what they are. 

No quick and easy will ever get you there. Quick and easy will NEVER get you even close. It is NOT reality. Believing in the Quick and Easy means you will believe in just about anything. It also means that you are NOT ready to be a leader. It means you want shortcuts; you want shortcuts where no shortcuts can exist. The easy way is not what will make you a true leader. All it will do is make you a very bad manager, especially when you realize that the quick and easy you seek is nothing but a pipe dream and a complete waste of time, energy, and resources. 

In any organization, bad managers are held without a doubt held accountable when they are found out wasting resources and time. Then the same applies outside of any organization, wasting time and resources are signs of individuals NOT ready to handle the responsibilities they may think they are prepared to handle. However, all is not lost. You can hold yourself accountable and press that reset button, learn from your mistakes, and get yourself back on track.

Achieving any level of leadership should take a long time. There are NO SHORTCUTS to hasten the process. There is no “one and done” when it comes to leadership.  Either you put in the work and get what you deserve, when you deserve it or you do not put in the work and you will get exactly what you deserve; nothing.

The length and difficulty cannot be stressed enough and even then, there will be many that will either attempt to shorten the process and fail or not take the seriousness of the situation and fail. The sooner you learn and accept the fact of this being a long and arduous journey will get you to the finish line right on time.

Visit my website (daveguerra.com) to view this entry with its accompanying Audio/Visual media options.

Be sure to subscribe to get the next entry delivered to you via email.

Until Next Week, I Thank you.

David Guerra, MBA

P.S. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @daveguerra • visit my website: www.daveguerra.com

P.P.S. To order your copy of Great To Follow: Amazon paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble paperback
To order your copy of The Walking Leader:  Amazon Paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble

10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership (part 4/10)

#4 of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership

LEADERSHIP CAN NEVER BE MASTERED

Most people will spend their entire lives trying to master leadership but the truth is mastery of the concept of leadership can never be mastered. Sure, you can read about leadership. You can attend seminars and/or take classes about the subject of Leadership but none of them will give you any form or level of mastery, as it does not exist. Sure, you can experience LEADERSHIP by being led or leading others. While all that is good and well, the reality remains the same YOU will NEVER master LEADERSHIP.

Go ahead and ask any true and genuine leader you know. They will tell you they have a long way to go to mastering leadership.

Pay close attention to whom you ask and their response, as those that “claim” they have mastered leadership are, most certainly, outright liars. They are NOT leaders but quite possibly very bad managers. See bad managers have this nasty habit of confusing intimidation as leadership. That is why most will say they have mastered leadership because they intimidate others. So, proceed with caution but I digress.

Back to the reason for why one can never go the distance when it comes to leadership mastery as it deals with a multiverse of variables that exist when it comes to being a leader. The multiverse of variables come at you from all angles, directions and for any number of reasons and, of course, in varying degrees and intensity. Never achieving mastery is solely because those variables are infinite. That is the reason why LEADERSHIP can never be truly mastered.

Take the following into consideration: If leadership could be mastered there would be ONLY ONE BOOK on the subject. Yet, libraries, bookstores, and the internet are full of books on leadership. Countless books of various leadership niches are published every year which are then added to the already gigantic pile of publications dealing directly with the subject of leadership and their various niches.

Next year, new books, articles, blog posts, videos and podcast will be published on leadership topics that have been around for a while and also on topics that have not yet been addressed. It is now 2022 and three years ago no one imagined the pandemic and all the challenges everyone would be facing. Now here we are, near post-pandemic, with new issues, concerns, challenges, as well as successes.

The ability to attempt to achieve leadership mastery is commendable and most certainly NOT futile. It is a goal that will always be just out of reach and it should never be something to give up on. Trying to master something that can never be mastered is a worthy cause. Never feel like you are spending your time and energy on something that is unattainable.

The time, effort and energy you spend on something you are passionate about is never unworthy. If your goal is to become better at what you do, then the idea or notion that it is not worth it is moot. Becoming a better person, a better leader, a better citizen is never a bad thing, actually it is an exceptionally good thing.

Ultimately, it may take a lifetime of continuously working on being the best leader you can be, all the while knowing leadership can never be mastered is not quixotic. It is to be applauded and encouraged. It is to be considered a journey. A journey filled with discovery and adventure but also a journey that never ends. That’s OK as the adventure is in the journey. Therefore, always be learning.

Visit my website (daveguerra.com) to view this entry with its accompanying Audio/Visual media options.

Be sure to subscribe to get the next entry delivered to you via email.

Until Next Week, I Thank you.

David Guerra

P.S. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @daveguerra • visit my website: www.daveguerra.com

P.P.S. To order your copy of Great To Follow: Amazon paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble paperback
To order your copy of The Walking Leader:  Amazon Paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble

10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership (part 3/10)

#3 of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership

Leadership Involves Making Lots of Mistakes 

Like anything in life MISTAKES will be made. No one is perfect and you will make mistakes. Consider making mistakes part of life. Making mistakes should be anticipated and expected. Plain and simple, a leader that does not make mistakes is playing it cautiously and carefully. 

A leader that plays cautiously and carefully is NOT a leader. Leaders should have a level of caution and carefulness but NOT to the point of never committing a mistake. Playing it safe is NOT how leaders grow and learn. Playing it safe means the individual is scared, fearful and not ready to take command.

Playing it safe is NOT what leading is all about. Of course, you have a duty to keep your team safe from harm, however, if all you do is play it safe, how will your team know to go with their gut, trust their instincts, or take a chance? Folks, if you are not prepared to take chances and make mistakes along the way, then you are NOT prepared to lead. Still hesitant, just know that no matter what; every decision you make will not always be the right one. 

Leaders, making mistakes and learning from those mistakes is the number one way to gain experience. Gaining Experience is the one thing that ALL leaders must do and have. It is through gaining and having experience that TRUE & AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP is born and Great Leaders are made. NO TEXTBOOK will ever replace experiencing the ups and downs of being a leader. 

Remember, no one ever became a Great Leader by having the minimum amount of experience. Get out there, get your hands dirty, jump into the trenches, dig foxholes, chop wood, carry water, get some REAL-WORLD experience because nothing is automatic. It is earned.

Greatness in leadership comes from doing what must be done especially if no one wants to do it. Great Leaders are born in the muck and mud. They are born when sweat and tears are the norm and not the exception. Great Leaders will lead from the front and not from behind a desk. Great Leaders rarely spend time behind a desk but most certainly spend time out among their troops. 

Great Leaders are out on the front-lines. They are well aware that they do not HAVE to be out there but they go anyway. They go not only to see, firsthand, how the battle is going but they go so that the people out on the front-lines know their leader is there and not behind the watchful eye of a gatekeeper or two. 

While gatekeepers serve a purpose, they are also a catalyst towards making mistakes. Mistakes that will prove costly to the leader. The comfort and safety that comes with having gatekeepers is what will lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication between the leader and those they lead. Folks, when it comes to misunderstanding and miscommunication, leaders may never truly recover from such mistakes.

Leaders be very careful when it comes to depending too much on your gatekeepers as they will, without hesitation and on your behalf, create climates and environments that will be at most unrecoverable. So, please proceed with caution but don't be too cautious or too careful that nothing great ever happens.

Visit my website (daveguerra.com) to view this entry with its accompanying Audio/Visual media options.

Be sure to subscribe to get the next entry delivered to you via email.

Until Next Week, I Thank you.

David Guerra, MBA

P.S. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @daveguerra • visit my website: www.daveguerra.com

P.P.S. To order your copy of Great To Follow: Amazon paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble paperback
To order your copy of The Walking Leader:  Amazon Paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble

10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership (part 2/10)

Thing Number 2 of the 10 Things You Do Not Know About Leadership

LEADERSHIP IS NOT A TITLE OR A POSITION

Someone, somewhere is selling people on the notion that having a degree automatically makes them a “leader”. Leadership is NEVER automatically given. So please do not be fooled into believing any of that nonsense.

The same applies when it comes to believing that because you hold a certain position you are automatically a leader, well guess what? THEY ARE WRONG. And if you believe that having such a position makes you the “automatic leader” well YOU ARE WRONG, as well!

Seriously, if you truly believe that because you have a degree such as a Bachelors, Masters, or Ph.D., MD, JD makes you automatically a leader, again you are wrong. Of course, and most certainly, you should be applauded for having the self-discipline for going the distance with your education. Kudos to you. 

However, your real-world education is just beginning. It is through the education you have along with the real-world experience you are going to earn and the wisdom you will gain that will make you a true leader. Believe it. Believe it as there are no shortcuts.

Remember, nothing is automatic, especially when it comes to being a Leader. So do not make the mistake of thinking you are the “automatic leader”. Believing that hype and then projecting that nonsensical belief onto others will make your true leadership journey all the more difficult to accomplish. Why is that you ask? Simple. 

Those you are “automatically leading” will be hesitant and resistant to your efforts. This will then lead you to receive more pushback from those around you. For the most part you arrive fresh without having to prove yourself and expect those to follow you. The pushback will also ensure that you climb to the top will be that much harder, arduous and difficult. 

Unless you are prepared to change your mindset to a more genuine and authentic approach to leading, you will be trusted less and more suspect about what are your true intentions.

When it comes to changing your mindset when it comes to the notion of “automatic leader” was your education automatically bestowed on you when you decided to go to college or university? No. You had to work for it. You had to actually crack open a book, attend a lecture or two, and then finally take some tests to see where you are and if you are capable. You had to pay your dues.

There is no difference when it comes to leadership. You pay your dues by learning some valuable life lessons, by getting to know the people you are responsible for. You also pay your dues by getting knocked around by life. You will be tested and whether you pass or fail you will still gain valuable life experience. Again, there is no shortcut to any of this.

You have to put in the work because nothing will be simply handed over to you. There is too much at stake for anyone to just say ‘here ya go.” You will have to prove yourself long before you sit down in the chair of leadership. You will have to prove it to yourself and even then, you will know when you are trying to fool yourself. But don’t worry others will quickly see through you when you are trying to fool them, as well. So, stop with the false bravado or wrong expectations before you start and get to work on your true & authentic self.

Visit my website (daveguerra.com) to view this entry with its accompanying Audio/Visual media options.

Be sure to subscribe to get the next entry delivered to you via email.

Until Next Week, I Thank you.
David Guerra

P.S. I invite you to follow me on Twitter: @daveguerra • visit my website: www.daveguerra.com

P.P.S. To order your copy of Great To Follow: Amazon paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble paperback
To order your copy of The Walking Leader:  Amazon Paperback / Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble