Over the past few years, I’ve invested a lot of time and energy travelling along the leadership path; learning, developing, continuously growing my leadership capabilities, and every single day has been enlightening.
Throughout those years I became aware that many of my peers enjoyed the title of a leader and the perks gained from promotions, but they seemed not to grasp the concept of what it means to be a true leader. It’s a lot bigger than yourself. Yes, leadership can bump up your salary, boost your notoriety within the company, but that’s nowhere near close to defining what true leadership is really all about.
True leadership is much more than status and recognition for yourself. Rather, leadership is about supporting, developing and helping others reach their full potential. It’s about transforming lives, hearts and minds, enabling others to maximize their success both professionally and personally. It’s about smashing down barriers and leading others through the uncertainty of the future.
The best leaders deeply cared for people, understood what a privilege it is to be a leader, and were successful in supporting their team get the wins achieve their goals and dominate their markets
Think about it for a moment. As a leader, you have the incredible opportunity to change someone’s life every single day. It could be something as simple as saying hello and remembering people’s names when you greet them. It could mean you being passionate about helping your people achieve and pursue all of their personal dreams and ambitions just as much as their professional one’s. It could mean you forcing everyone around you to grow and develop into stronger and wiser human beings that will end up taking them to a place they never thought was possible before they met you.
There is an abundance of qualities needed in order to become a true leader. Me, I strongly believe that one of the most important traits that all leaders must possess is a passion to develop and maximize the potential of others. When you begin to transform people individually, you then begin to transform your team as a whole
Transforming lives is a quality that every memorable leader has thought about every single day of their lives, because they understood if they could transform their people, they would then be able to meet their objectives. The leaders that are too caught up in egotistical gratification rather than the development of their people will simply fall short in the long run. There is a major difference between true leadership and authority driven management.
Your commitment to going the extra mile to care for your people, lend a helping hand and inspire them will determine the results you receive. When a leader fully understands what true leadership is all about, not only will their teams never be the same again, but they as individuals will be changed forever as well.
There is nothing easy about true leadership. It’s one of the most difficult jobs in the world, but it also has the potential to be one of the most rewarding jobs in the world. Whether you lead a team of four or 400, focus more on being a developer of people and helping those you lead become all that they can possibly become. That’s true leadership.
