“No leader can ever achieve anything great or long-lasting all alone. Teamwork goes hand in hand with leadership. Leadership is about people-and for people.”
–John Maxwell
Leadership is all about people. Understand this one fact. We need to focus on our people if we want to lead well. In leading any organization, the focus should be 95% people and 5% organization. People are an organizations most important asset. We need to protect our assets. A leader’s most important asset is people skills.
As a task-oriented person, where empathy is at the bottom of my strengths, I am reminded daily of my need to continually work on my people skills. When someone has a challenge or is suffering emotionally, my thoughts used to be, “get over it,” “why wallow in your pain? Rip the band-aid off and get on with your life.” From experience, I can tell you that this attitude doesn’t work in the organization that I lead, and it definitely doesn’t work at home.
If we are not a people person, we need to become one, or this is going to be a limiting factor in our lives. Lacking people skills will become a lid on our leadership. If you can get the people aspect of leadership right you can lead in almost any environment.
You can have people skills and not be a good leader, but you can’t be a good leader without people skills. You will not sustain your leadership without good people skills.
My mentor and John Maxwell’s right-hand man, Mark Cole, shared these three traits of an relational leader in a teaching.
1. The leader has head knowledge and understands people. Understanding people will help us know how to inspire and motivate those we lead. One way to achieve this knowledge and understanding is to take the time to ask questions and genuinely listen to our people.
2. The leader has a heart for people. We need to inspire, serve, care about, and care for people. People need appreciation, recognition, personal caring and the tools to get their job done with excellence. I have learned to practice “walking around the room slowly.” I take the time to come out of my office daily and go and visit each person working with me daily. At first, they thought they were in trouble…I hate to even write that out loud
. This habit has made all of our relationships closer and I believe it has deepened their trust in me.
3. The leader has the ability to help people. True leadership is about developing and investing in your people. When we invest, develop and empower our people, it makes the whole organization better. Relationships strengthen, teams collaborate better, and people develop confidence in their abilities to achieve more.
What are we doing to develop our people skills? What are we doing to develop ourselves?
Warmly,
Jan
Jan McDonald
John Maxwell Team
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