Nature Gives Us Clues
If you were going to pick a model from nature for how to create and operate as a great team, which animal would you pick?

How about lions, tigers, hippos or bears?
Those species are known to eat their young, or the new guy or gal on the team, in our analogy. That doesn’t make for good team building!

How about wolves or hyenas?
These animals are known to constantly have ego fights for dominance—definitely not good for trust and the morale of a team.

How about salmon?
Certainly their long struggle to swim upstream in dedication to duplicate (procreate) the team has to be a good role model, right? Yeah, well, the only problem is, once they have finally done the quiver (seriously, that’s what they do—they align themselves next to each other and “quiver” while they each do their part of the act), they die. That can’t be good if every time new people are brought into your team the leaders die. So salmon are out.

I know what you are thinking… eagles, right?
Eagles are good role models for soaring to individual heights, but they are poor team players. They are known to be territorial, pretty hostile toward one another and constantly stealing prey from one another.

Get this… momma eagle usually lays two eggs and most often the bigger of the two siblings (which is usually the female, as they come out bigger) kills the other sibling while mom looking on (harsh, right?). No, you don’t want the new recruits killing each other or the leaders stealing sales and clients from each other. Eagles, team players? Not so much.

No, the animal species you want to learn from and emulate in working together as a team are… read more »

Contrary to what many might think (and many practice), the most important job of a leader is not to speak, preach, direct or advise….

The most important job of a leader is to listen.

In a recent interview I did with management guru Tom Peters, he revealed the four most important words in business leadership are “What do you think?”

Tom said listening should be a leader’s full-time profession. They should be the professional gatherer of input, ideas, feedback, opinion, perspective and personal experience in order to make informed, well-thought-through leadership decisions.

Richard Branson once said to me, “If you are a good leader, you are a good listener.”

This is true for everyone in every aspect of life, but it’s one of the most neglected skills I observe every day. I am always fascinated by how poorly people listen. There are many ways people invalidate and hurt their relations with others by their lack of listening skill.

Here are a few…

The Offenders. These people are the worst. They make it clear you are read more »

I have observed that one of the most overlooked but important qualities of great leadership is one’s courage and willingness to do what is unpopular.

Unarguably, one of the greatest leaders in history, at the time of his leadership, continually suffered vehement opposition and may have been one of the most unpopular people ever to serve in his position.

His name is Abraham Lincoln, consistently ranked by scholars as one of the greatest of all U.S. presidents.

Because Lincoln’s viewpoints were so different from that of many other government officials, he faced constant antagonism. Famously, as a congressman, he took a very unpopular stand against President James K. Polk regarding the Mexican War, saying the war was unjust.

The Great Abe lost elections for several different political offices before finally being elected president by one of the lowest popular margins in history. He was regularly ridiculed and viciously attacked by the press. Right before the 1864 election, a newspaper editor in La Crosse, Wis., actually suggested someone be Brutus and stab Lincoln. Lincoln was, of course, unpopular with Democrats, but for much of his administration, he was also unpopular with some members of his own party; even his Cabinet, composed of men he had beaten out for the Republican nomination, often confronted him.

Yet, because he was willing to do what was read more »

What does it mean to be a leader?

Leaders are those who can turn a struggling, ragtag army freezing at Valley Forge into a force that topples an empire. Leaders are people who reach out to friends in pain to help them topple their fears and recapture their confi dence. A leader can take a nation engaged in civil war and help unite the factions. A leader can also help save a struggling marriage or warring family.

A leader can cast a vision and challenge a nation to achieve something seemingly impossible—even as audacious as putting a man on the moon. A leader can also cast a vision for a startup company that inspires a small group of people working in a garage to ultimately revolutionize an industry and forever change how we live.

Whether leading a nation, a multibillion-dollar corporation, a small sales team or a family, the qualities of a leader are the same. A leader instills confidence and helps people become more than they are. Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.

“Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.”

Whether we know it or not, we are all leaders. At every moment, everyone around us is watching our example. That is why it is important to make sure your example is one to reach for rather than one to be warned by. I think leadership is the great calling of life, the grand challenge for us all.

Leadership is not to hold power over others or to illuminate our own greatness; quite the opposite, in fact. I believe the most important responsibility of leadership is to read more »