People have always wanted great leadership from those they follow.

Today it’s demanded, expected, and intuitively desired for leaders to break the status-qou and truly lead.

The change is often counter-intuitive, causing a need for real thinking about the ripple effects of our interactions and decisions. Ripples can’t be measured, tested, and researched.

If we only trust what’s proven we only get results that have been proven.  Breakthroughs happen in companies with leaders that think about the positive and negative ripple effects of decisions.

What feels right to say and do sometimes isn’t.  In fact conditioned thinking often is disguised as ”using my intuition” (I know what’s needed here). Our own paradigms can get dated from over relying on our experience.

If we’re leading exactly how we were just 5 years ago then perhaps we are missing out on tremendous opportunity to help people and organizations grow

Leaders are the lid period!  Look at any company or organization and the leader is either the catalyst of growth or the beginning of the problems.  The results of the company have the fingerprints of those leading all over them.

In my recent Starbucks visit I asked the long standing barrista “Since Howard Shultz has returned as CEO do you feel the difference?” I received an overwhelming nod of yes.

I ask “How has he impacted you personally?”.  And he began to share things like…“I feel a greater sense of meaning in what I’m doing…before we were just serving as fast as possible trying to get through the customers but now it’s about service and quality again”. I could feel his sense of active followership to a CEO he has never personally met.

There is a lie too many leaders believe: “It’s not my job, or it’s impossible to influence deep down into the organization”.

When in-fact, this is the very essence of a great leaders role.

Great leaders:

1. Listen to ideas with both a real intent to understand, and openness to implement
2. Create a feeling of ownership in the organization and empower people to proactively take action.
3. Give more respect than we feel is deserving, and more responsibility then makes sense to give.
   • Only then will people rise and become more respectful and capable!
4. Are REAL.  We all believe we are, but very few of us actually are real.

We read “Good to Great” and agree with Jim Collins where he says something like,

“Deal in reality….the worse thing a leader can do is give a false sense of hope in the future” yet when the moment comes to spin something or be real, we often keep spinning to manage current reality for our people.

Short term gains create long term trust erosion.

5.  Honest about the reality of their own set thinking.  They truly think about why                they believe every thing they exert on their followers. Challenge it by asking; “Is this        really the best thinking?  What has changed?  What is even better than this so                called best wisdom I’ve been taught”.

6.  Create a vision people want to believe in, but don’t shift it.  They instead stay                  the course even without feedback

7.  Create a culture that energizes people, creating highly  engaged leaders and                     teams.  Where people see the significance in what they do that attracts them                   to their work.

A culture always exists but too often it’s mediocre because leadership fails to simplify it, make it clear and drive it into existence with their words full of conviction.

There is no longer room in the marketplace for average leadership and sometimes even good leadership.  The difference maker to thrive in the New Economy is to pursue great leadership.