In your personal life, authenticity is about being yourself regardless of social context. In business, it’s about walking the talk, being true to ethical principles and maintaining your personality and essence consistently. Traits of a true leader.
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Trascend via leadership
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This holds true for any position of leadership, both in professional and personal settings.
Leaders look to be challenged
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If you surround yourself with “yes-men”, you will never attain the unimaginable and you will never find out what you’re really made of.
A visionary leader looks to be challenged. “My way or the highway” is fine for emergency situations where decisions need to be implemented quickly but in the day to day operations and long-term vision, you’re missing out if you’re so insecure about your own standing that you won’t allow for (or promote) healthy debate. Valued professionals don’t want to follow… they want to co-create and co-achieve. Invite them to.
Obedience vs. alignment
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True leaders are able to promote and achieve enthusiastic alignment within their teams. Bad bosses rely on constant demanding of obedience due to their own shortcomings as motivators, communicators, influencers and leaders.
Leadership is constant, not cyclical
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Piss people off
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It may seem counterintuitive, but I believe a good leader does a disservice to himself and his journey if he is more worried about making friends than making a difference.
Leadership is filled with tough choices and it is part of the leader’s role to make the right ones, even when they may not be the most popular ones.
Making your mark is usually surrounded with detonating change. And change makes people uncomfortable. But if your ambition is to make people comfortable, you might want to choose a different career, as a masseuse.
Piss people off and be ok with it. Just be intelligent about it.
Leadership embraces balance
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Many times, achieving professional results will mean having to sacrifice personal and family time. That’s just the way it is.
But you have to keep score… and an unyielding promise to even that score (with yourself and your loved ones) once you achieve said results.
Integrity… always
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Leaders develop people… without fear
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Feedback And Leadership
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An important part of leadership is being able to constructively provide feedback and develop others.
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