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November 27, 2008 4 Comments

Leadership Series Part IV: Leadership Traits 1 of 5

Continuing the series of a leadership speech I gave in Oklahoma City.

Leadership Trait 1 of 5:

1. Leaders are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.

When I was younger I was taught somehow somewhere – I don’t remember exactly where – that volunteering to help and raising my hand was a bad thing. You didn’t want to get called on by the teacher. And when the teacher or somebody else called on people to help with something you should slink and hide out of the way and hope the teacher didn’t see you.

Do any of you do that?

I know I did. But as I starting getting older I learned something that I am going to share with you right now. I learned that raising my hand and volunteering to help was the coolest thing around. It was not to be feared. It was something to look forward to. Why? Because when people see that you are willing to volunteer to help them or your class they remember that. They remember that that person is not afraid of a challenge. They are not afraid to do something hard.

And as you get on in life you are going to learn that people LOVE people that volunteer. Because people that volunteer to help other are showing one of the traits of a great leader. They are not afraid to stand up and say “I’ll do it”.

Filed Under: Goals, Leadership
November 20, 2008 1 Comment

Leadership Series Part III: Why would you want to be a leader?

3rd part in the series.

You can see part I here and part II here:

Part III
It is incredibly rewarding. Your ideas get to be used and implemented. Leaders start things.  They get the ball rolling.

Being a leader means that you are going to have to do things that MOST people do not want to do. You are going to have to stand up and say things that most people are afraid to say. And you are going to have to believe things that most people do not want to believe. And for the long term you are going to have to have the courage to stick to what you believe in and follow it through to completion.

Sometimes you are going to have to embarrass yourself. [Bring up audience member for example]

You are going to have to put yourself in front of your friends and your foes and tell them “I
believe this is what we should be doing and this is where we should be going”. They might
ridicule you and put you down. They might tell you that what you want to do cannot be done.
People have tried it before and have failed. But you have to have faith in yourself and your
ideas. Sometimes you may be the only one that does.

Leadership is scary sometimes. Here is an example of family leadership: My wife and I had decided that we were going to take a different direction than all of our friends had taken: We were going to go into business for ourselves. I had to visit another business in Sacramento, California that I was going to be doing some work for. As I was laying on the bed in the hotel room thinking about what I was getting ready to do – to become a leader/entrepreneur this panic overwhelmed my body all of sudden. I remember that it came over me like a wave starting from the tips of my toes and consuming me all of the way to my head. I started having doubts about whether I could do it or not. What if I fail? What if I fail so badly that it hurts my family? What if we run out of money and we cannot eat? These are the things you have to look at and find a way around as a leader. You have to know that you might fail, but you have to believe in your soul that you will succeed.

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Filed Under: Attitude, Leadership, Productivity
November 18, 2008 Leave a Comment

Leadership Series Part II : Why is leadership so important?

Another part of my presentation in Oklahoma City on Leadership:

–

If you look around the world today you will see that most people are on auto pilot.

- This means that most people wake up every day at the latest possible time that they can to get to school
- They drive the same route to work as everybody else
- They arrive at the same time as everybody else and go to the same desk that everybody else goes to
- They work the minimum numbers of hours they have to to get done what needs to be done
- They drive home the exact same way that they came
- They go to bed so they can wake up and do it all over again in the morning

Doing the same thing every day is very comfortable and very safe. It makes us feel good to know exactly where we are going and what is waiting for us once we get there. If something ever disrupts this comfort it scares us. For example : If something blocks our road on the way to work we don’t know what to do for awhile. It makes us squirm. We have to adjust.

Occasionally you find someone who thinks that we can be doing something in a better way. That person believes that we can learn a better way in school. Or we can do something in our community or our neighborhood to help another group of people. That person sees a problem that has existed for a long time and has found a new way to solve.

That kind of person is a leader.

And good leaders are hard to find . They are rare because most people just want to do the same thing because it is safe. We need more people like you and you and you that are not happy with being comfortable and safe. We need young people such as yourselves to stand up and say “Hey… I think we should go to the mountain top. And I know a great way to get there. It may be hard. It may take longer than the other way. We may stub our toe every now and then or scrape our knees. It is not going to be the same way that all of the other people are going. But we will be much better people by the time that we get there.”

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Filed Under: Attitude, Goals, Productivity
November 8, 2008 2 Comments

Leadership Series Part I: What is Leadership?

I recently gave a presentation locally in Oklahoma City on what leadership is and how our youth can become effective leaders. Here is the first part of that series:

Leadership is the ability to inspire people to reach a common destination. It is the wisdom to see the challenges and obstacles that are placed in your way and know that you can get around them. You may not know how or when. But you honestly believe deep down in your heart you know you can get there. A great leader will pull you and help you accomplish things that you did not know that you could do. A boss will sometimes push you to someplace that you did not want to go in a way that you don’t want to go.

It is also someone who by word AND by deed always does the right thing. What does that mean – by word and by deed ? Always – even when nobody is looking. Why is this person a leader ? Because sometimes it is hard to find a person who always says and does the right thing. When we find that kind of person they can become our spiritual and moral leader. These are the kind of people that we can aspire to be like.

Stay tuned for part two to be posted shortly. I’d be interested in your comments below on Part I

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Filed Under: Attitude, Goals