If you want to be a leader who attracts
quality people, the key is to become a person of quality yourself.
Leadership is the ability to attract someone to the gifts, skills,
and opportunities you offer as an owner, as
a manager, as a parent. I call leadership the
great challenge of life.
What’s important in leadership is refining
your skills. All great leaders keep working
on themselves until they become effective.
Here are some specifics:
1. Learn to be strong but not rude. It is an
extra step you must take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of
reach. Some people mistake rudeness for
strength. It’s not even a good substitute.
2. Learn to be kind but not weak. We must
not mistake kindness for weakness.
Kindness isn’t weak. Kindness is a certain
type of strength. We must be kind enough
to tell somebody the truth. We must be kind
enough and considerate enough to lay it on
the line. We must be kind enough to tell it
like it is and not deal in delusion.
3. Learn to be bold but not a bully. It takes
boldness to win the day. To build your influence,
you’ve got to walk in front of your group.
You’ve got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle
the first problem, and discover the first sign of trouble.
4. You’ve got to learn to be humble but not
timid. You can’t get to the high life by being
timid. Some people mistake timidity for
humility. Humility is almost a God-like word
A sense of awe. A sense of wonder. An
awareness of the human soul and spirit. An
understanding that there is something
unique about the human drama versus the
rest of life. Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the stars, yet having
the feeling that we’re part of the stars.
Humility is a virtue; timidity is a disease.
Timidity is an affliction. It can be cured, but
it is a problem.
5. Be proud but not arrogant. It takes pride
to win the day. It takes pride to build your
ambition. It takes pride in community. It
takes pride in cause, in accomplishment.
But the key to becoming a good leader is
being proud without being arrogant. In fact,
I believe the worst kind of arrogance is
arrogance from ignorance. It’s when you
don’t know that you don’t know. Now that
kind of arrogance is intolerable. If someone
is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that.
But if someone is ignorant and arrogant,
that’s just too much to take.
6. Develop humor without folly. That’s
important for a leader. In leadership, we
learn that it’s okay to be witty but not silly.
It’s okay to be fun but not foolish.
Lastly, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save
yourself the agony. Just accept life like it is.
Life is unique. Some people call it tragic,
but I’d like to think it’s unique. The whole
drama of life is unique. It’s fascinating. And
I’ve found that the skills that work well for
one leader may not work at all for another.
But the fundamental skills of leadership can
be adapted to work well for just about
everyone: at work, in the community, and
at home.
(Source: Jim Rohn, motivational speaker,
author, philosopher, and entrepreneur.
http://www.jimrohn.com)
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