Some things I've learned about leadership

1. Some Thoughts About
Leadership
Ernest Shackleton leaves Elephant Island on the James Caird with five other members of the expedition.
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Copyright © 2009 George Rome Borden

2. Leadership: Guiding Principles
● Lead through vision not authority
● Always tell the truth
● Delegate what you know
● Everything you do is in service to others
● Create an environment of autonomy, Abraham Lincoln
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3. Leadership: What is it?
● All things change
● Guide people to change such
that objectives can be acheived
● Communication
○ Say exactly what you mean
○ Strength and Warmth
● Confidence
○ Fluidity of motion
○ Posture, Smile
● Influence in the informal
organization
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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4. Leadership: Create a Team from a Group
● Understand that nearly everyone wants to
be part of a team
● Start with one to one meetings with your
staff and ask:
○ Why do you want to be in a team?
○ What team activities/things do you Whalers vs. Spirit
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○ What do you see as the benefits of a 2.0 License
team?
○ The replies are bound to have
commonalities. These provide tools to
create team activities
Copyright © 2009 George Rome Borden

5. Leadership: Create a Team from a Group
● Get team members to rely on themselves and each other
○ Avoid using authority
○ Ask don’t tell
○ Create connections between team members
○ Many leaders think their job is to tell people what to do.
The real work is to know what you think is best, avoid
telling people what you think and inspire them to come up
with better ideas than yours
Copyright © 2009 George Rome Borden

6. Leadership: Create a Team from a Group
● Create trust through work by creating situations where trust
can be earned and given
● Cross populate projects
○ Team needs to trust each other to complete their tasks on
the co-project
○ Knowledge of the project is less concentrated and
therefore less risk
● Allow teams to self select tasks. This way they will see that
they can trust each other
● When someone is selected to perform a task, explicitly ask
the team whether or not they trust the person for the activity
● Ahead of time you should already know what you think. This
becomes a reference frame for active listening to the team
Copyright © 2009 George Rome Borden

7. Leadership: Reaching Peak Performance
● Why do you want peak performance
from your team?
○ A good team nearly manages
itself, which leaves time for
you to focus on other activities
○ A self-managing team makes it possible for you to provide
guidance
○ Once you have a team, can you guide the team such that
the whole adds up to more than the peak performance of
the individual members?
○ Reward team efforts. Ask of each person, what they can do
to improve the team
Copyright © 2009 George Rome Borden

8. Leadership: Learning
● Find and keep a mentor
● Get in the game
● Read science on human behavior
● Steer yourself toward success
L–R: Neta Snook and Amelia Earhart
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