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The Great Leadership Challenge by Jim Rohn (excerpted from
Leading an Inspired Life)
If you want to be a leader who attracts quality people, the key is
to become a person of quality yourself. Leadership is the ability to
attract someone to the gifts, skills, and opportunities you offer as
an owner, as a manager, as a parent. What's important in leadership
is refining your skills. All great leaders keep working on
themselves until they become effective. Here are some specifics:
Learn to be strong but not impolite. It is an extra step you must
take to become a powerful, capable leader with a wide range of
reach. Some people mistake rudeness for strength. It's not even a
good substitute.
Next, learn to be kind but not weak. We must not mistake weakness
for kindness. Kindness isn't weak. Kindness is a certain type of
strength. We must be kind enough to tell someone the truth. We must
be kind enough and considerate enough to lay it on the line. We must
be kind enough to tell it like it is and not deal in delusion.
Next, learn to be bold but not a bully. It takes boldness to win the
day. To build your influence, you've got to walk in front of your
group. You've got to be willing to take the first arrow, tackle the
first problem, discover the first sign of trouble. Like the farmer,
if you want any rewards at harvest time, you have got to be bold and
face the weeds and the rain and the bugs straight on. You've got to
seize the moment.
Here's the next step. You've got to learn to be humble but not
timid. You can't get to the high life by being timid. Some people
mistake timidity for humility. But humility is a virtue; timidity is
a disease. It's an affliction. It can be cured, but it is a problem.
Humility is almost a God-like word. A sense of awe. A sense of
wonder. An awareness of the human soul and spirit. An understanding
that there is something unique about the human drama versus the rest
of life Humility is a grasp of the distance between us and the
stars, yet having the feeling that we're part of the stars.
Here's a good tip: Learn to be proud but not arrogant. It takes
pride to build your ambitions. It takes pride in your community. It
takes pride in a cause, in accomplishment. But the key to becoming a
good leader is to be proud without being arrogant. Do you know the
worst kind of arrogance? Arrogance from ignorance. It's intolerable.
If someone is smart and arrogant, we can tolerate that. But if
someone is ignorant and arrogant, that's just too much to take.
The next step is learning to develop humor without folly. In
leadership, we learn that it's okay to be witty but not silly; fun
but not foolish.
Next, deal in realities. Deal in truth. Save yourself the agony of
delusion. Just accept life as it is. Life is unique. The whole drama
of life is unique. It's fascinating. Life is unique. Leadership is
unique. The skills that work well for one leader may not work at all
for another. However, the fundamental skills of leadership can be
adopted to work well for just about everyone: at work, in the
community, and at home.
To Your Success,
UniqueGuidance Team
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