In The Lead

A lot of attention in leadership goes to the final presentation, the achievement, the accomplishment, the big wow. But that last 1% that gets all the attention was exactly that...1%. Nearly all of the leadership time and energy went somewhere else. Leadership isn't spent in the final result. It's spent in the slow process of getting there. And that slowness takes patience. So...let's talk about patience.

My family was riding on the roof. Our ranger was hanging out the window with a gun. And every one of us was staring at the elephant herd half a mile down the road.

Nobody was looking at the one fifteen feet away.

This week on In the Lead, a Ugandan safari that almost went very wrong, and what it taught me about leadership.

Performance is a math problem. It's not an input, it's an outcome. The math is simple: performance = intention x capacity x opportunity. In the last episode, we talked about intention. Now, when you add capacity and opportunity, you finally arrive at performance. The result of a person with right intention, enough capacity and some opportunity is...performance. So, if all those other things are the required inputs, I guess the question is: why do we only talk about performance?

We spend a lot of time in leadership paying attention to outcomes. Performance. Accomplishments. What about intentions? Does it matter what someone "meant" to do? Do we care if the "intent" was good? Should we?

In this episode of In The Lead, Nathan discusses the first half of the question: the intentions going in. What should/could leaders accomplish if we ask about the intentions before the event?

The answer might surprise you.

Every job has a what and a why. The what is the same for everyone who does it. The why isn't, and it changes more than you'd think: how the day feels, what gets done that nobody assigned, and what your team learns from you without you saying a word. This week is about the difference, and about who's handing out the why in your building.

Starting something new is the fun part. The real test comes in week nine, when the buzz is gone and nobody's checking. Using a simple morning huddle, Nathan shows why the payoff usually comes late, and why your team is watching what you do in the boring middle.

You've attended one at some point. It's the meeting. It's the meeting that happens after the meeting. Sometimes, that second meeting is just a casual and friendly debrief. Othertimes, it's where the real stuff gets said. Why?

In this episode, we're going to dissect this second meeting, find out why it happens and see if we can't figure out how to pull it all back into the room. If it works, you get invited to the meeting after the meeting.

There's a common fact of leadership that is rarely discussed. You didn't pick this team. You inherited them. Sometimes, if you stay long enough, you will lead a team of people that you yourself hired. But that's not common. What is common? Inheritance.

In this episode, we talk about leading anyone, regardless of whether you hired them or they came with the building or got promoted by the leader before you. Leadership is about encouraging ordinary people in extraordinary ways. What are you doing with your inheritance?

It's just a light bulb. How could it possible shape culture?

In this episode, we are looking at all the stuff we've walked past. And...better put...how walking past things shapes culture. Every step teaches.

It's lonely at the top.

Have you ever heard that phrase about leadership? There's a lot of truth in it but it's important to distinguish what kind of "lonely" we're actually talking about here. In this episode, we're looking at Ernest Shackelton who referred to the loneliness as his greatest challenge. It's not a bad thing. It's an honor. It's a good weight.