Successful Leaders Make a Difference

You are failing as a leader if you’re not consistently making a difference in the professional lives of the people around you. For ALL people… most importantly your employees, but also your peers and even your boss. Respectively, the nature of these relationships is different however the impact should be deliberate and focused on specific outcomes.

Your employees look to you mostly for your guidance, support, and perspective. They want to learn, grow, and achieve success but don’t always understand what that means or how to get there. They need your help to show them the way. You owe it your peers to be honest, collaborative, and to challenge them as a trusted adviser. Your boss, regardless of their personality, needs feedback (a mirror of sorts) to let them know how they are doing in supporting your ability to reach your full potential.

In all cases, YOU make the difference.

Your Actions Reveal Your Intentions

All leaders have some level of an impact on others but it’s not always good. To minimize the negative and increase the positive, the solution is simple – it starts with YOUR intent. The common expression “what were you thinking” makes my point. Unintended actions, outcomes, and consequences typically originate from the lack of a thoughtful and purposeful approach to dealing with people and situations.

Leaders are charged with achieving results and by the nature of the role this needs to be accomplished with and through other people. If you want to lead others you’d better be sure you have people willing to follow you. So, be well aware of your intent. In the process of getting results, do you simply think of people as loyal subjects to get things done OR are you deliberately planning for their professional growth and future success? You can’t fake it. Intentions have to be genuine to build a real following.

Focus on Potential

Nothing matters more than leadership, whether it is growing a company, building a team, or developing an employee. Leaders see the vision, chart the path and inspire others to follow them to success.

Having a vision for an employee requires a keen understanding of a person’s full potential but also needs to be connected to their wants, needs, and desires. For the leader, this is not an extra effort but rather a conscious effort of charting a path forward, looking for new professional growth opportunity, and challenging the employee to do more than they would do on their own.

Left to chance, you may achieve some success; but if approached as though you are looking through the eyes of your employees, you will make a remarkable difference and, collectively, accomplish great things.