Category: leadership

Bystanders

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We can’t control how others will react to us, but we can control how we behave in their presence. What and how we say and share things, how we respond to their requests, what we do when they tell something unexpected, how we are present and listen.

We over-stress about their reaction and pay little to no attention to how we can influence that. We play the part of the bystander when we actually are (one of) the main character(s).

It’s no guarantee that the other person’s will do what we hope for. But we will at least feel infinitely better.

In the background

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you constantly doubt what you do, people will start doubting you as well.

If you play down compliments all the time, people will stop complimenting you.

If you point at your flaws and the skills you lack, people will turn their heads in that direction as well.

The fact is, if you do all that to stay in the background, modesty is not a good strategy.

Try empowering others instead.

Checklist

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A checklist always gets the job done.

It accounts for rules and processes, it ensures that timelines are met, and it guarantees that no critical step is forgotten.

But what a checklist does not do is to consider the emotions of those involved. The stress it puts on them, the uncertainty between one step and the next, the guessing that tends to fill in the gaps.

For that, there’s no checklist that can help.

You’ll just have to be human.

Loyalty

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Some people mistake performance with loyalty. It’s common in sport, for example, where players are good only for as long as they wear the right jersey. And it’s common in business, where employees get rewarded for tenure and compliance.

But while performance can be fluctuating over a period of time and in context, there is no correlation with loyalty.

One could actually argue that the capacity to be in different teams, to learn from different environments, to deliver under different circumstances, tends to increase and strengthen performance.

So, when mixing performance with loyalty, what we are really doing is judging the worth of our cause, of our principles, in a sense of our very own performance. It’s one of those cases where we let the decisions and opinions of others affect how we think we are doing.

And we should try to never let that happen.

Not a zero-sum game

FabrizioLeave a comment

Is there not enough greatness in the world that we need to waste time establishing who is the greatest?

Is there not enough talent in one field that we need to waste time establishing who is the most talented?

Is there not enough skilfulness in the team that we need to waste time establishing who is the best?

Pointless discussions lead to meagre results.

And in the meantime, the world goes on thanks to those who understand that greatness, talent, and skilfulness are work and commitment at scale, not a zero-sum game.