As a business leader, you no doubt find yourself making hundreds of small decisions a day, if not plenty of larger ones as well. Each one of these decisions, however minor, takes a small bite out of your willpower to remain a productive person that day. Experiments show that your personal willpower is a renewable resource—it is totally possible to develop more of it, but if you run out, it’s hard to get that magic back.
“There are no longer any great jobs where someone tells you precisely what to do.” -Seth Godin
The nature of work (and satisfaction with that work) is changing. It’s only becoming more common for people to strike it off to go do their own thing for an income, and shun the conventional idea of being someone’s employee. Another quote that touches this same concept comes from Bob Dylan, in which he says “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” This represents a frictionless life, and as a job often constitutes a large part of one’s life, you can bet someone doing whatever he wants all day isn’t complaining about his work.
We’re continuing our rundown of the personality traits that make up a good leader. Part one is here, and without further ado, here’s part two:
Strong leaders operate from a sense of purpose. Here’s an interesting test to give yourself: would you do your current job today if you didn’t have to? If your answer is no, then it’s likely that your job hardly lines up with what you consider your “purpose.” Be sure to plumb the depths of what you think is important so that you can have fleshed-out opinions on what it is you’d rather be doing. Then go do that instead, silly.
Are you calm and measured like Abraham Lincoln? Are you obsessively committed like Steve Jobs?
While it’s important to be your genuine self as much as possible, this doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lesson or two (or three or seven) from those classic leaders recognized as being the best in their fields. These are people who respond with grace under fire, who motivate and inspire those around them, and make everyone feel a little better or optimistic when the fruits of their labor take shape.
You’re not making a list of things to get done each day. Your memory is never as good as you think it is. Make it a habit to write down important tasks and ideas, and build a to-do list from them. A to-do list should be the foundation of your productive day. When you can see all the tasks you know are still yet to be done, it becomes that much easier to prioritize and reassess where you are and what’s next most important.
The most effective leaders are the ones who relate to people in basic, sincere terms. It’s entirely too easy to get caught up in your head about whether or not you’re an effective manager. It’s much better to instead be a genuine leader who works closely with employees and makes them feel valued.
A good working life has a lot to do with boundaries. Are you going to answer your phone after 9 PM? Are you going to cut vacation short in order to work on an upcoming project? If you have these hypothetical questions answered ahead of time, then you’re already doing a good job of defining such boundaries, but it’s also too easy
An executive’s days can be bumpy and noisy without a moment’s pause to reflect, make plans, and contemplate solutions to problems. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of becoming a taskmaster that ends up doing the same things over and over again without ever actually advancing the ball forward. These times are essential to build into your routine in a way that best serves your needs—an undistracted slot of time for your brain to explore and put issues to rest.
The leader of a company is both blessed and cursed: he has the burden of a lot of tasks to get through and decisions to make in a day, but if the company is of a certain size, he has the benefit of handing off tasks to other members of the organization. Some items will naturally flow from superior to subordinate, and it’s always excellent to see a person’s effort made more effective when it can be divided well amongst supporting staff. But where is the line between what should and shouldn’t be handed off to someone else to take care of? And how do you delegate without letting anyone else think you’re a lazy manager who can’t do things for himself?
