The 3 questions of leadership

What are the questions a great leader should always be asking themselves? The legendary Renn Vara lets us in on some Silicon Valley secrets.

In June we staged our first Sales Confidence conference at HereEast, in London’s Olympic Park. We called it SaaSGrowth2018. We had over 200 SaaS professionals in the audience, watching more than 30 of London’s foremost SaaS experts share their knowledge. Even if you couldn’t make it, we want to share the inspiration and education with you through our SaaSGrowth2018 articles.

Renn Vara

‘What do you need to do to be the very best leader in your business?’ was the title of one of the afternoon sessions. We were excited to welcome 5 leadership experts to the SaaSGrowth stage to talk about how to run teams. However, to have Renn Vara in our line-up was pretty special.

Since 1992, Renn has been the guy the Silicon Valley icons call when they need help with leadership communications. He was there from the beginning at Google (when they employed 300 people), at LinkedIn, at Salesforce and many more.

As part of his talk, Renn told us about 3 questions great leaders are constantly asking themselves.

‘Don’t be afraid to do things your way. Great leaders do this every day. They ask themselves 3 questions.’

1?—?Who am I?

‘Who am I? What are my values? What do I care about? Really.’

For great leaders, their values are their guide. To always be aware of your values is essential in leadership when you’re constantly confronted by opportunities to go against them.

We often have opportunities to cut corners, to take your foot off the pedal, to let things slide when you really shouldn’t. We are tempted to give in to others for the sake of a quiet life. Awareness of your values keeps you on the right path.

2?—?What do I do?

‘What do I do every day to embody my values? What do I do to ‘walk the earth’ with those values?’

‘What leaders screw up on is they put all their values on the wall, then live a different value. You lose your teams. You lose your companies because you’re living 2 lives.’

It’s true. Just knowing what you believe isn’t enough. You have to walk the walk every day.

To read the rest of this article, please visit the Sales Confidence site.