I'm the Founder and CEO of Meaningful Leaders. An accomplished Aviation Management Professional with over 27 years of experience working with and leading high performing teams in the areas of maintenance and manufacturing. Creator of the Team Building Manifesto | Bestselling Author | Thought Leader | Common-Sense Practitioner | Leadership Trainer, Coach & Content-Creator | Problem-Solver | Keynote Speaker
What I’ve learned so far though is that the secret to getting anything accomplished is to get started. Creating is hard and putting our thoughts and experiences out there for the world to see and read and most probably criticize, makes us extremely vulnerable, but without vulnerability and the courage to face criticism, nothing authentic can ever be created.
Leaders must be humble and becoming a leader in the pursuit of monetary compensation, will ALWAYS make you fall short and feel inadequate. Leadership is labor of love, but it requires that the leaders equip themselves with the necessary tools to bring others along the ride and help them grow and succeed. Moreover, as leaders such growth has to be intentional. Growth doesn’t just happen, it’s premeditated, it takes investment, it takes sacrifice.
A vital trait of a bulletproof team is having the understanding that higher value is linked to higher compensation. It is simple math. An employee is an individual selling a service to an organization for an agreed amount of money. Like with any contract, default from any of the parties will set ground for such agreement to be terminated. In other words, an unhappy employee will quit or an unhappy employer will terminate the individual’s employment. In either case both parties lose.
If you have the pulse of the team, you will easily be able to identify these behavioral changes. When you do, be mindful not to pry, yet ensure that your team member knows that you are there if they need to talk. On the other hand, they may come to you for advice; which gives you now an even bigger responsibility. You see, opening up is not always easy, but if you have earned that level of trust with them, focus on listening and guarding their confidence.
As leaders we need to be attuned with our environment and develop the ability to create lasting authentic relationships. Yet as previously stated intellectual ability alone won’t build the path to success, if leadership is your calling. On the other hand, your EQ allows you to deal with intangible things like stress and emotions that have a direct impact on your ability to perform as an individual, as well as as part of a team.
Position or title equals power. There are two types of power, referent and legal. Referent power, also referred to as authority, is based on trust and respect and is born as the result of consistent action. Legitimate or legal power is typically derived from a position and is based on both perception and reality. The […]
The game changer is to always surround yourself with people that are smarter than you, that’s right, try to always be the dumbest in the room. The capabilities, knowledge and experience of my teams are second to none. I cannot pretend to know how to do what they do to the level in which I can do it myself, but I can help them in reaching levels of excellence that they didn’t know they had in them and that is what makes us a good match.
A fail-safe way of conducting a meeting is proper preparation, and in order to properly prepare for a meeting, I recommend the following sequence in order to ensure we are maximizing people’s time and effort adequately. Remember, time is the most precious asset we have, and one we can never get back!
Leaders who are strong in adaptation are both curious and flexible thinkers. Normally, they are the ones disrupting the business, challenging the status quo and looking for ways in which they can increase their contribution. They welcome opportunity and are innate creators. Adaptability goes hand-by-hand with outside the box thinking.
Being in a leadership role, doesn’t make you any less human than the members of the team you’ve been entrusted to lead. The willingness to be vulnerable allows leaders to have compassion with themselves, as well as with others. Because of their authenticity, they are able to create connections, as they are willing to let go of the preconceived idea of who they needed to be, in order to become who they truly are, and that is key because any team can measure if the leader’s intentions are true or not, based on their behavior.
