Musings on Leadership

T rust is one of the fundamental components of good leadership. To follow you, your team has to trust you. Your team will trust you if: They truly believe you have their best interests at heart. Your actions match your words. Humans are wired, from an early age, to look for inconsistency in behavior. We're suspicious of anyone whose words don't match their actions.  Always make sure you "walk the talk". Not only is your team always watching you - they're also always listening to what you say. They're listening to see if what you say matches what you do. Feeling the urge to gossip about one of your team members with a friend? DON'T! Your friend may be eager to hear your gossip but, later, they'll wonder - are you gossiping about them to someone else?

 ( This post isn’t about leadership but it’s still a lesson I think we all need to be reminded of now and then. ) I read a story about a young woman who had just graduated high school. Her father said to her, “ Here is a car that I bought many years ago. It’s pretty old now but, before I give it to you, I want you to take it to the used car lot downtown and tell them I want to sell it. See how much they’ll offer you for it. ” She did as he asked and returned. “ They offered me $1,000 because they said it looked pretty worn out. ” He then asked her to take the car to the pawn shop. She returned and said, “ They only offered me $100 because it’s so old. ” He then asked her to take it to the local car club and show it to them. When she returned she excitedly said, “ Several people offered me $100,000 for it because it’s an antique and such an iconic car and sought after by many collectors! ” He smiled and told his daughter, “ The right place will value you the right way. ” The moral of th

  ... that is the question. ( I hope you will forgive my paraphrasing of Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from “Hamlet” ). In management, one good piece of advice is to pick meaningful metrics that drive the result you want. Because, let’s face it, people will do that on which they’re measured. For instance, if you’re trying to grow your organization’s membership, what’s the best metric you can find that lets you measure how well you’re doing? Is it the number of new members? Maybe it’s your retention rate. Beware! There’s a world of difference between “meaningful” metrics and “vanity” metrics. Some common “vanity” metrics are page views, number of visitors, social media likes, etc. To differentiate between the two types, ask yourself 3 questions: Can I tie this back to real performance? Does this reflect what’s REALLY happening? Can I do something useful with this information? But beware of something known in economic circles as “Goodhart’s Law”. Charles Goodhart was a British economist