Laws of Leadership with Bill Leahy
Leadership is a very strong concept. It is unique to everyone. So how do you understand leadership? Well, different people have a different understanding of the word ‘leadership’. This is because we have our own unique perspectives. Every person has his own skills and is working in different fields of everyday life. These people can be leaders in their own way. It doesn’t matter if you are working in the office or just leading a teenage life. Once you realize that you are a leader, then you start showing abilities of one. But there are some laws that you can use to govern better leadership.
These laws can be used to lead people in your day-to-day activities as a leader. There are five of these laws. These are categorized into internal and external laws. Two of these are internal and the other three are external laws. The difference between them is that you use internal laws to check how you are being true to yourself like if you are following those rules that you have made yourself or not. Then the external laws are to keep check and balance on your behavior towards other people, whether you are being true to them or not.
The first internal law is ‘Don’t let the urgent overwhelm the important’. It means that a leader has to focus on things that really matter in the long run. You can’t always get involved in daily problems. That job is for the people who are there to deal with those routine issues. A leader has to keep his eyes on the major goals and the end mission. If he starts interfering with routine problems—no matter how urgent they are—he will lose sight of the real mission. He has to be able to trust his own people to take care of smaller problems.
The second internal law is ‘Have a mentor’. You have to have a group of people or a third party who will be directly above you. They can be a number of people or a person who has already dealt with problems that you may face in your career. They evaluate your performance and then guide you through difficulties. Having a good mentor can be a life-changer.
The third law, an external one, is called ‘Every day is a trial’. When you are leading a group of people, you have to build your credibility from the very first day. This law is related with the fourth law called ‘Honor those not in the room’. You have to take responsibility for things when situations change and you couldn’t deliver. You can’t blame people or point fingers at those who are absent since they can’t defend themselves or provide feedback. The only thing that you will gain from this is division among people. You need to keep your integrity intact.
The last law is ‘Tell the truth’. Keep your integrity in place. Like they say, if you tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.
Always remember that leadership is an on-going journey. Understand that you may make mistakes when you are in a leadership position. You just have to learn and develop with time.
Eruditio Links:
- Eruditio
- HP Reliability
- A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance Free eBook
- inspired Blended Learning (iBL®)
- James Kovacevic’s LinkedIn
Bill Leahy Links:
- MainWorld article (coauthored with Shon Isenhour): Developing Leadership in Maintenance and Reliability
- Recommended Books: John Wooden books
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