Jun09
Being part of a team and being a highly effective leader, you have a responsibility to keep improving. Being the best on the team is not what is important. The most important thing is to work on yourself every day, and to help your teammates to do the same.
Your team are relying on you to keep working on yourself. They are relying on you to help them. They are relying on you to NOT QUIT. Keep striving to reach the next level and even further, and keep striving for your team to reach the next level and even further. DO NOT QUIT.
At this moment in time, you and I have still not reached anywhere near close to our full potential. Your teammates have not reached anywhere near their full potential either. We all still have a long way to go to reach this level, so it is so important that we persevere and don’t get disheartened and quit.
Try not to think of your teammates, or others within your organisation and industry as competition. People who are not at the same level as you are not your competition. People are around the same level as you are not your competition.
People who are ahead, and even way ahead of you are not your competition either. There is only one person who is your competition: YOU.
You are the only person you should be in competition with.
Highly effective leaders are only in competition with themselves. They compare themselves to the person they were yesterday, and so should you. They reflect on the person they are today, and so should you.
They compare themselves and look forward to the person they are capable of becoming tomorrow, and so should you. If becoming a highly effective leader is a commitment, then you are the only competition you will ever have. So, do not quit on yourself.
By working on yourself every day to become better will keep you fully aware of how you are doing, especially when comparing yourself to the person you were yesterday.
If you don’t work on yourself every day, then you have no comparison because you will still be in the same position. For example, I read leadership books, or self-development books every day, mainly to improve my character.
I do this to expand my knowledge and make myself better than yesterday, so the comparison is obvious and I can be honest with myself.
Working on myself every day also gives me the knowledge of how far I have come in a certain amount of time, and how far is left for me to come close to my potential. This is part of reflecting on who and where you are in the present day.
When thinking about and comparing yourself to the person who you want to and could become tomorrow, when you eventually reach your potential can sometimes be difficult.
However, it is absolutely necessary to make this comparison. You will realise how far you have left to go to reach your full potential, and how much you need to improve. You will give yourself a reality check that we all need to have, and again be honest with ourselves.
When you are making these comparisons, make a promise to yourself. The promise is to not let failure, or the fear of failure to pull you backwards, or worse…quit. Instead use failure as a way to learn from any mistakes you made yesterday, or today.
When people talk about failure, they are not actually referring to failure as final, they are referring to learning something new about themselves or someone else. In your case you will be learning about yourself.
When you are learning to drive, during the lessons your instructor doesn’t say you are failing to drive when you make a mistake. No, he/she tells you that you will learn from that mistake. We should be exactly the same way with ourselves when we make any mistakes. We are not failing, we are learning.
This trait is also an excellent trait to teach your teammates to make the same promise and commitment to themselves. The learning to drive analogy works well too because most will not give up on their driving as they want to pass their test and buy their own car.
We must not give up on ourselves when working on ourselves every day and becoming highly effective leaders.
When you or your team are starting something new, it is essential that you must get comfortable with making mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes at the beginning then you are not going to learn, or figure out how to do things better.
Some people call mistakes failures, and some people call mistakes… mistakes. It is up to you what you call yours, but the point is that we need to use our mistakes in a positive way to move forward.
The most successful people and the most successful teams in the world have made many, many, many mistakes. The difference between them and the unsuccessful ones is how they learned from those mistakes, and then took action to move forward.
A highly effective leader has made lots of mistakes too on their journey, and they know how to be comfortable with making them, and then learn from them. Mistakes will never make a highly effective leader to give up on themselves, or their team.
As you strive towards reaching your own potential, and as you strive towards helping the team reach theirs, you must do it with high intensity. By keeping the high intensity up, it will energise you and the team, and your willingness to succeed will ever increase.
Whatever influence you have on yourself and your team today, it can always be increased tomorrow. If you think that you are great already, then you can always be greater tomorrow, make no mistake about that.
The question is: Do you have what it takes to increase your influence, become a highly effective leader, and strive to reach your full potential?
If you are then you must work on yourself every day and not give up on yourself. Your full potential is in the distance, but it can be reached. However, it cannot be reached if you only work on yourself once a week, or even three times a week. It can only be reached if you commit to working on yourself every day.
You can only become a highly effective leader if you work on yourself with high intensity. You can only become a highly effective leader if you help others to work on themselves every day too, and strive to reach their full potential.
You can only become a highly effective leader if you remain positive, and work to improve your character every single day. You can only become a highly effective leader if you commit to becoming a highly effective leader. The only way to become a highly effective leader is: DO NOT QUIT
I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.
All the best,
By Tom Lawrence
Keywords: Culture, Leadership, Transformation
Using AI to improve replenishment planning
Increase Your Influence With More Effort
Rethinking Consent, Visibility, and Trust in Ethical AI System Design
Data Ethics by Design: A Strategic Primer for AI-Driven Leaders
All Habits Dull the Brain
