Leadership Secrets: How Being A Teacher and A Student Helps You Win

The Biggest Dichotomy of Leadership

You can never know everything. There's no point pretending that you do.

Leadership is about trust. It is your responsibility to guide your team to achieve the goals that have been set. To draw out the strengths of each person, supporting each other to win.

This is one of my favourite quotes. It comes from the book "The Dichotomy of Leadership" by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

Every leader must be willing and able to lead, but just as important is a leader’s ability to follow. A leader must be willing to lean on the expertise and ideas of others for the good of the team. Leaders must be willing to listen and follow others, regardless of whether they are junior or less experienced.

It's empowering when people feel heard. Knowing that they can share their idea or perspective and that the person in charge is listening.

What's equally enabling is for them to know that you are supporting them. That you trust them to make decisions.

Pushing your ideas and not considering your team's thinking is the fastest road to being a bad boss.

People hate not having a choice.

How Do You Lead and Follow

Your experience gives you perspective, it doesn't always make you right. The longer you have worked in a field, the most important it is to seek out new information. Connect with new employees, people new to the industry and share your stories.

Be curious and ask more questions. Here's the key. Ask questions with the sole intent to understand. Not to respond. You are not grading an assignment. You are looking for how someone else things, and why they are making the connections that they do.

Be vulnerable. Admit when you don't know or aren't sure. People think that this is a sign of weakness, it's not. Everyone knows it is uncomfortable for someone to admit they don't have an answer. Explain your thinking. Share what you are factoring into your decision. Tie your rationale to what you are trying to achieve.

Mistakes happen. Stop trying to avoid it. New leaders will avoid delegating in fear of someone making a mistake. The less you trust your team, the less effective they become. Explain what the objective is. Make sure that you are all aligned on how to get there.

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