Vannoy and Ross
It’s likely your company is pushing for (fill in the blank): excellence, or intolerance for mediocrity, or being remarkable, or world-class, or best-in-class, or perfection. Every organization has jargon and strategy to differentiate itself. Such actions are essential.
So what decides who actually delivers excellence to the market place? Of course, the answer lies in the question: “How do we get there?”.
Some leaders believe that how you get to excellence is by leading louder than they’ve lead in the past – as if turning up the volume or the intensity will get people to act the way we want them to. This shows up in the need for more meetings and more we’re-not-going-to-take-it-anymore-fists-on-the-table conversations.
This, of course, pushes people away into greater levels of disengagement.
Leaders who are natural accelerators (note that “accelerators” is not synonymous with “experienced”) know that delivering excellence doesn’t mean doing more of what got us here; it means evolving how your team interacts in every moment of every day.
For example, ask your team:
· What’s the difference between a leader who demands and draws out excellence from others…versus a boss who is simply demanding?
· Where’s the line between a leader who commands respect and behaviors aligned with our organizational values…and a boss who is just commanding?
You should know that this type of leadership – what is being written about in this post – wasn’t inspired by some Ivy League educated guru. Nope. These words and questions were heard at a recent retirement party for an elementary school teacher – and a remarkable one at that. “If I was building a school, I’d do it with teachers like you,” said her principal.
What if excellence doesn’t require that you become more brilliant in business, but instead is a function of being more brilliant as a human being?
