Build the Plane While it’s in the Air

If you don’t have something worth talking about, talking and listening are a waste of time. Communication skills are irrelevant apart from meaningful outcomes.

Define the future first, then determine and develop the skills that take you there. Leadership skills are best learned when needed. Outcomes, deliverables, and noble goals infuse leadership skills and techniques with meaning.

Build the plane while it’s in the air. Learn and develop as you go.

Exception – attitudes and character first:

Develop leadership attitudes and character before teaching skills and techniques. Attitudes are hard – skills are easy. Techniques are quick – character takes time.

Attitudes:

1. Self-development. Develop yourself before developing others.
2. Optimism takes you further than pessimism.
3. Leading is serving.
4. Mistakes aren’t final.
5. Give to others what you expect from them. Giving respect earns respect.
6. It’s always about others.
7. Face fear with courage.
8. Face toward the future.
9. Forgive offenses while maintaining responsibility for outcomes.
10. Act more than react.
11. Trust.
12. Values matter most.
13. Seek solutions more than giving them.
14. Adaptability.
15. Tenderness compliments toughness.

Bonus: Believe you can learn, adapt, and grow.

Why wait on skills:

Relevance infuses skill development with purpose, meaning, and urgency. The leadership skills you need are the ones that take you where you want to go. For example, train leaders how to run meetings when they start running meetings.

What three leadership attitudes are essential to effective leadership?

How are attitudes developed?

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10 Surefire Ways to Find Your Greatness

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Our world confuses potential with performance. Never let mediocre performance seem outstanding. You insult high performers, nurture incompetence, and sell yourself short.

You aren’t entitled to greatness, it’s earned.

What is greatness:

Greatness is serving; the more you serve the greater you are.

10 Ways to find your greatness:

1. Embrace dissatisfaction. The path to greatness begins with discontent. Growth stops with contentment. All leaders are unhappy with something.
2. Courageously confess frustration to yourself and others you trust.
3. Face discontent with optimism. If you sink into despair, you’re done. Millions of reasons say you can’t. Find one reason you can and hang on. One good reason changes you.
4. Reach for noble goals. Tomorrows dream change you today. Does your dream inspire? If not, it’s below you.
5. *Forget balance.* Balanced people are safe, dull, and marginally effective. I have a friend who wants to teach English in China. Another couple wants to work with orphans in the same country. A third couple spends most of their spare time working with college students. They are unbalanced freaks, over-focused on serving.
6. Serve others by helping them reach noble goals.
7. Serve others so they can serve others. Exponential influence begins with multiplication not individual performance.
8. Press through fear. Your greatness is on the other side of discomfort and fear. Fear keeps you average. Your greatest fear is letting go of average so you can reach higher.
9. Surround yourself with success. Read, explore, and ask questions. I’ll never forget the day I asked a successful business man what he would do different. He said, “If I could go back, I’d take more risks.” KaPow!
10. Just start.

Bonus: For goodness sake, say it! “I want to serve many.” Don’t hang your head. You aren’t arrogant. You’re humble.

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Which of these ideas are most challenging or useful? What can you add?

What do you think holds people back from greatness?

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