Leadership is About Motion and Emotion

Leadership is About Motion

Fundamental to leadership is this idea that you need to know where you’re going.  Where are you leading?  What is your destination? Where will you and your organization stand tomorrow where you aren’t standing today?  How will your future state be different than the current one?

Pick a destination, make a plan to get there, and put that plan in motion.  Because if you aren’t traveling in a direction that people can follow, you simply aren’t leading.  You’re standing still.

If you don’t know where you’re leading, people can’t follow.

Leadership is About Emotion

Leading people requires tapping into your emotions and the emotions of others.  A.k.a. the human side of things.  Yeah, emotions can be messy and hard to navigate, but if you don’t at least try, people will eventually leave you.  Consider questions like these:

Do the people you lead take joy in coming to work?  Are they proud of their accomplishments?  Do they have disdain for their coworkers?  Are they outraged at recent organization changes and are they anxious about their employment?  Do they respect and trust their leadership and are they devoted to you and the company?

Asking these questions, and many more, can help you enter a nice mutual space with your people.  The discussions that follow can help form bonds and create relationships that allow you to be a successful leader and your people to be even more successful humans.

If you can’t lead like a human, humans won’t follow.

[Images: jtbramblett.wordpress.com; adliterate.com]