Clarifying Your Leadership Focus

What are your leadership principles? Your irreducible minimums? The things you refuse to compromise? — How would you define these?  Would writing them require a sentence, a paragraph or a full page? What would that document look like and how would you practice it?

I suggest every leader do this exercise to establish their personal leadership baseline. If leaders do not first define their irreducible minimums then coping with life’s variables will be a challenge to say the least.

When my Granddaughter was in grade school she chose one of Shel Silverstein’s poems to recite called “Hector the Collector.” Dressing in costume enhanced her presentation but she also flawlessly quoted the poem explaining the dilemma created by collecting too much stuff (yes, I am a proud grandfather).

Her poem reminded me of how much clutter we often have in our leadership styles. We “collect things or concepts” because others in leadership are doing them or writing books about them. However, in reality they just encumber our work, schedule or life.

Before long, we are doing “things” because others are doing them not because they fit our principles, values, or our irreducible minimums. Our leadership becomes multi-faceted but at the expense of quality input in the lives of the people on our team. 

Defining the “Things that Matter” in our leadership will help us say no to the “Things that Don’t.” Determining our leadership values will help us create predetermined benchmarks for evaluating new ideas, programs or ventures. There is a great freedom that comes with intentional leadership. What are some of the irreducible minimums of your leadership? I would like to hear from you.