26 November
2011
Written by Brian Martin
You can see that in enrolling people to help you reach your destination, you yourself are the limiting factor. It’s your ability that counts, your ability to formulate and articulate a compelling vision, your ability to enrol others to assist, and your ability to lead others to accomplish the outcomes you want. Nobody else can do that for you – it’s your responsibility, and it’s your opportunity!
After several decades of working in corporations and devoting a large part of my life to teaching leadership, I think the most important attribute a leader has to have is ‘authenticity’. If you are not authentic, then you will easily be discovered and found out, by your employees, your customers, the people you interact with in your life. As the world becomes more and more complex, genuineness (genuineness is more and more difficult to find) being yourself I believe is really important.
Over the years, as I have grown and developed there would have been times in my earlier days, when I was full of my own self-importance, both for the job I had and the compensation packages I was able to earn in my various positions.
Fortunately, I have a great love for people which I think has stood me in good stead. The other point that I realised early in my career, was that if I was to be a good and authentic leader, then I needed to serve other people and make them successful. In fact as a CEO I passionately believed that my responsibility was to help my employees, particularly the managers who reported to me, to be successful. Because if they were successful, then guess what? So was I.