5 Leadership Lessons from a Road Trip

Here are Five Leadership Lessons I learnt during a recent road trip with my family that I thought I'd share with everyone who manages people to achieve results.

Let your people speak first

Days before the trip I threw a question to Mrs. and the kids, ‘where would you want us to do a road trip to?’ They discussed and arrived at a destination, Kumasi. I smiled and said okay, Kumasi it is!

Truth is, a week or so before this discussion I had already begun arrangement for the trip and had chosen Kumasi behind the scenes without their knowledge. So to them, they made the decision, and that’s all I needed.

As a leader, you need to have the courage to let your people bring out their ideas even if you have one. It doesn’t matter who brings out the winning idea, what matters is that the team succeeds. Allowing others to speak first doesn’t make you incompetent, it rather means you value everyone’s opinion and guess what, when you make your people feel like they made the decision, they own it.

Simon Sinek was right when he said leaders eat last.

Create a Vision and Guiding Behavior

Once the location was chosen ‘by them’, I fixed the date and would use the next several days to create enthusiasm and curiosity in the kids. I painted this beautiful picture of Kumasi that made them eager to embark on the trip.

On the day of the trip I set the ground rules for acceptable behaviors.

Putting three under-teens together in a car for a several hours trip would surely get you to say ‘stop’ a few times and my wife and I were not exempted but generally they behaved acceptably.

Jack Welch said it right, ‘as a leader, create a vision of a future so beautiful that everyone is willing to come with you’. Your vision must be specific and if possible time bound. Leaving it vague and open-ended only gets you and your people frustrated.

Set guiding behaviors and values to ensure your people exhibit only the behaviors that would help you to achieve the vision. Don’t shy away from disciplining those who disobey, knowing that the only reason you discipline is to change behaviors and not to make people feel less about themselves.

Motivate your people, appropriately

About four hours into the journey there was sudden quietness in the car. The enthusiasm was dissipating. Some were getting tired, others were hungry.

I pulled up at the next rest stop. We grabbed something to bite and to drink, got refreshed and stretched. When we got back on the road, happy chit chats resumed, enthusiasm restored.

Your people will get tired along the way and as a leader, give them rest. Their enthusiasm will go down, motivate them appropriately and celebrate the little successes. Let them appreciate what’s in it for them. Don’t use them as if they were donkeys just because you pay them salaries. Salaries are hygienic. Motivation from salaries only last a few days.

Look within for solutions, with a child’s mind

At the end of every day we would recap, speak about the new things we had seen and learned.

On the first night my daughter spoke about the mountains she saw in the Kwahu area and how intrigued she was to see buildings atop some mountains. She went on to say ‘the lesson is, no matter how high the mountain is you can build on it if you really want to’.

I have used the Accra-Kumasi road on countless occasions, I have seen higher mountains in other parts of the world with buildings on them, never have I been intrigued. I soaked Eyiaba’s observation in deeply and yes, she was right.

See, sometimes the motivation you need for yourself and for your people lies right within your organization. They may be things as little as saying ‘thank you’. Answers to your questions, solutions to your problems, sometimes they all just lie within. Look at things with the eyes of a child and discuss solution ideas with the mind of a child. So fertile without prejudice, so limitless.

Constantly learn, seek growth for your people.

Everyday of the three days trip was a learning day. The visit to the Manhyia Palace was an eye opener for us all, we learnt many things about the Ashantis and their rich culture. The visits to Opoku Ware, Yaa Asaentewa Girls, Prempeh College and the KNUST, the ones to Adum and the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital were really for the kids. They learned and saw in real life things that most of their contemporaries have only read about in books or seen on TV.

Constantly learning new things and resolving to make everyone you meet better than you have found them is the hallmark of a great leader. Those who think they are old dogs and can’t be taught any new tricks have no place in contemporary leadership. Those who’s first point of cut in a downsizing exercise is their training department need training themselves, I’d imagine.