To make a high impact, you must move beyond management and supervision.

Note: The following is an excerpt (Chapter 2) from my book, MAXIMIZE Your Leadership Potential. There are 30 three pages chapters which also make it the perfect tool for conducting 30 day book studies with your team or peers.

DEMYSTIFYING LEADERSHIP

MOVING BEYOND MANAGEMENT & SUPERVISION

"Leadership is about taking responsibility for lives not numbers. Managers look after our numbers and our results, and leaders look after us." ~ Simon Sinek

Wow! Simon nailed it. Unfortunately, the reality is most people experience management instead of leadership.

Is that your reality? How does your boss treat you? Like a person or an object? Does it matter? How does it make you feel? Does it impact your performance? Pause and think about it.

What is your team’s reality? How do you treat them? Like a person or an object? Would some say a person? Would some say an object? Does it matter?

I’m asking you to look in the mirror. Every high impact leader’s journey begins in the mirror. Most likely, you found it easier to look out the window at your boss than to look in the mirror at yourself. Choosing to be a high impact leader isn’t easy. You must do a lot of work on the inside if you want to be highly effective on the outside.

I refer to the leaders Simon described above as high impact leaders. I hope you are one or choose to become one. Also, any reference to the term manager when discussing the leadership of people is purely related to those people who are in a position of authority that choose to continue treating their team members like objects, instead of like people. Those managers either don’t value high impact leadership (I can’t help them at all), or they simply don’t know what they don’t know (I can help them a lot).

High impact leaders look after their people. Managers always look after themselves and rarely, if ever, look after their people beyond what is required. This book is not about the management of people or the supervision of people. Anyone can manage and supervise if they have a position of power and the authority to do so. This book is about helping you become highly effective as a high impact leader.

Don’t misunderstand me. Unless you are the absolute top leader in the organization, you must be a manager of things and processes. And, you should be a leader of people. However, if you are the top leader and you want to only lead, you can always hire others to do all of the managing of things and processes for you with a few exceptions along the way.

To say it simply, we must manage things and processes because they don’t think or feel. But, we should lead people because they do think and feel. Unfortunately, when you have a position of authority, you can take the easy road and choose to manage the people too. Or, at least, you can until they do some thinking and change departments or work addresses. When that happens, you can no longer manage or lead them. We choose our actions, but not our consequences.

During my 20 years in the corporate world before I started my own consulting business, I didn’t work with many high impact leaders. I can actually count them on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. And, I remember them all. All the rest chose to manage those of us that worked for them.

You don’t work for high impact leaders. You work with them. They know it, and you know it. You don’t work with managers. You work for them. They know it, and you know it.

Is your boss a manager or a high impact leader? Most likely, you knew the answer instantly because you’ve already been thinking about it. I hope you’ve also been thinking about this question too: “Do those who report to me work for a manager or with a high impact leader?”

They already know the answer just as you already knew the answer about your boss before you started reading this book. I’ve simply provided some new terms and some new ways of looking at it.

How do you know when you’re in the presence of a high impact leader? It’s simple. You’ll feel it. How do you know when you’re in the presence of a manager? It’s simple. You’ll feel it. However, what you feel in each case will be tremendously different. The leader will generally leave you feeling good. The manager will generally leave you feeling not so good.

The question you need to ask yourself at this point is: Do I want to become a more effective leader of people, a high impact leader? If yes, you’re in for a treat. Because I’m going to share some golden nuggets of wisdom that will help you launch your career as a high impact leader, if you apply them.

Many of these nuggets I learned during over 11,000 hours of leading leaders and their cross-functional teams through process improvement, organizational change, and cultural transformation, without a position of direct authority over any of the team members. I was an outsider, a consultant, hired to lead groups of strangers. Most of the time they didn’t want to change, so I had to build trust and influence them to buy-in to me first and my vision second. We always achieved amazing results together.

Many of these nuggets will also come from the hundreds of leadership books I have read, the thousands of hours of leadership audios I have listened to, and the numerous leadership seminars I have attended. I have validated what I’m sharing with you by first applying it in my professional life at work and also my personal life at home.

I hope becoming a high impact leader excites you, it should. If so, you must be prepared to climb the leadership mountain.

"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent." ~ Douglas MacArthur

FREE downloads available:

Click here now for a FREE download of the entire leadership principle-packed Chapter 11, "Get Out of the Way and Lead" from the first book in my Demystifying Leadership Series: Defining Influence. In this nearly 20 page chapter, I share about:

·      Managing vs Leading

·      Scarcity vs Abundance

·      Formal Authority vs Moral Authority

·      The 5 Types of Leaders

·      Compare/Contrast 17 Manager vs Leader Perspectives

Click here to access the first 5 chapters of “Blue-Collar Leadership: Leading from the Front Lines.”

·      Ch. 1: I’m one of you.

·      Ch.2: I believe in you.

·      Ch.3: You’re in the perfect place.

·      Ch. 4: Common sense is never enough.

·      Ch.5: There is an “I” in Team.

Note: I encourage you to be a river, not a reservoir. Please share my blogs with others if you find value in them. I believe in abundance and write them to help others become more effective, successful, and significant.

Make an impact!

Mack Story

My passion is to help you live with abundance, achieve success, choose significance, and leave a legacy. In other words, I want to help you make a High Impact !