Reflections on Leadership
People may not care about the actual function of the organization, but they do care about how people speak to one another. They care about people being sensitive to one another’s feelings. They care about having their voice heard. They care about people respecting their time. They care about not having to listen to rude or off-color jokes. They care about the harm gossip creates. They care about the negative impact of favoritism and cliques.
As leaders we can let our emotions inspire us to act, but we cannot act emotionally. Allowing the emotions that inspired you to act into your decision making or planning process will limit your objectivity and steer you away from being methodical and …. UN-emotional. And believe me, methodical and unemotional is where you need to be when you decide to plan, act, and ultimately find success.
There are countless ways to describe leadership and leaders, so let’s get a little raw and discuss my favorite, “The Disruptor.” Leadership fires me up and disruptive leadership really fires me up. So, when I meet a disruptive leader, well, I get fired up. Today I’m fired up because I think I just met one on a podcast that I co-host. There’s a new company called Civil and it was founded by Matthew Iles. Matthew and Civil are taking on the journalism industry with words like blockchain, decentralization, honesty, and accountability. Most importantly, he doesn’t care what he’s up against.
Great leaders set guidelines and hold people accountable to those guidelines. Behavior in our country over the last several years to today has been leaderless and without guidelines or accountability. Outlandish behavior has been, and is being, justified at every turn by people of all colors, creeds, religions, and especially political affiliation.
