I love the Simple Truths products and have used them a lot in working with leaders. This morning received the video below in my email. I thought it was worth sharing with you.

As leaders, it is so important that we “walk the talk” in our lives. Leaders are watched all the time to see if they are actually doing what they tell others to do. This is true no matter where you are, your work, your family, friends, and coworkers. It is disheartening to have a leader who you believe in and see them not do this. And yet, it is perhaps one of the most challenging things we must do as leaders.

Take a few short minutes and watch this film and then I’d love to hear your comments below. What is your biggest challenge and how will you meet it today?

This saying by Theodore Roosevelt is one of my favorites: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Good leadership is caring about the people you lead. The reality is that nobody really cares how much knowledge you have, but they do care about how you make them feel.

I love the site “Simple Truths” as they have such inspiring products. Today I received this link to a great new movie about the richest man in town. I hope you will take a few minutes to watch the video and think about how it applies to your own leadership style.

Do you know someone who touches lives like this? Let’s here about it!

Have you ever had one of those days, or weeks, when you’re the leader and you work to motivate the folks around you, yet nothing you do seems to work? Or something you tried just fell flat and didn’t work at? I think we have all had those times and they sure aren’t fun. What happens then? Who motivates the motivator?

A friend of mine once said “leadership’s not for sissies,” and I sure agree with that statement. It’s tough work. There are days when it just seems too much to keep going and you want to quit. What do you do then? Well, a good leader just bucks up and moves on, right? Yes, and if only it were that easy.

I believe leaders need to have a plan for those times when things just aren’t easy. Here are a few suggestions for you:

• Have someone you can go to who WILL encourage you. It may be your spouse, your best friend, just have it be someone who isn’t on the team you’re trying to motivate. It has to be someone who can and will let you be “human.”
• Read motivational quotes and books. I find some great pick-me-ups in things like this. You can subscribe to daily motivational quotes as a way to start your day.
• Remember the times when sometime DID work. Take a few minutes and remember how it felt when something you did was awesome and you just wanted to push even harder to get more done.
• Network with other leaders. It helps to share challenges with other leaders and learn from each other how someone else has handled a similar situation.
• Take a look at the people you have mentored. For me, that’s one of the biggest feelings of accomplishment, watching someone else grow. It’s exciting to see them come into their own and to remember how they started.
• Take a break! No one can be “up” 100% of the time and sometimes it’s best just to step away and take a break. Imagine a day with no work, no internet, no interruptions, just to relax and do for YOU. It can be quite refreshing.

What have I left out? What other things do you do to find motivation when you just don’t feel like it? I look forward to your comments.

It’s funny how life works sometimes. Last week right after I wrote this post, I came across a great example that related to leadership in some of my reading. I wished I had seen it before that post, so decided this morning it’s worth doing a “part two” to that post, just to share this story with you.

Last week when we talked about what happens when leaders derail is that they sometimes lose sight of their humility. I think it may be fear that causes that, and the puffer fish is a great example of what happens. When a puffer fish is threatened, they swallow huge amounts of water or air, causing them to grow several times their normal size. This allows them, in most instances, to not become prey for another animal. If you take a look at this picture, it also doesn’t make them very pretty. On one of my first visits to Barbados, I bought a puffer fish spine, all blown up, from a street vendor. I was fascinated with how big this little fish had become.

What we need to remember is that being humble is about not boasting or exaggerating our size. We often live in a “fake it till you make it” kind of world, and in reality that’s not authentic leadership. So, I encourage you, don’t become the puffer fish in your leadership style. It may work for the fish, but it’s not only unattractive but usually unsuccessful in leadership.

Humility

It’s a strange thing

The minute you think you’ve got it,
You’ve lost it.

Have you known leaders like this? In leadership, it really is about being humble and adopting that spirit of servant leadership. It’s been interesting lately as I venture into new territories with blogging and the internet world. There are so many experts out there and sometimes it’s hard to know who to follow and who to listen to. It seems everyone is an expert and some appear to be quite full of themselves. For me, those aren’t the ones I choose to listen to. The ones who have my attention are the ones who are focused more on how to build a relationship and less on themselves.

Leadership is rarely about “I” and always about “us.” It’s amazing how things change when you don’t care who gets credit for a good idea or a successful project. Good leaders tend to none of the credit, and all of the blame. If something goes wrong, then it falls to the leader to take responsibility for that. When sometimes turns out awesome, it was the team who did it.

What happens when we begin to think too highly of ourselves? I believe that’s when leaders lose their followers. People generally don’t want to work with or follow someone who believes they have all the answers and know THE only way to do something. They sure don’t want to follow someone who takes credit for everything.

Sadly, the loss of humility can be what causes great leaders to fail. When someone loses sight of the fact that it isn’t all about them, it can create that downward spiral that is described in Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership (NelsonFree) by Tim Irwin. (This link is an Amazon affiliate link.) We’ve all seen it and it’s pretty ugly to watch that happen to someone.

Does this mean you should think less of yourself and your skills? Of course not. What it does mean is that you develop a mindset that thinks of others first. It makes it all about your audience, about those around you. One of my favorite quotes is “humility doesn’t mean you think less of yourself, it just means you think of yourself less.” In the end, that really is what it’s about.

How about you? What examples of humility have you seen in leaders? Please share your thoughts here in the comments section.