Leadership Fundamentals

You know, I’m getting “longer in the tooth” everyday adding more and more years of leadership experience to my resume as I go. I’ve been at it for a very long time. I remember my first “paid” leadership position was at the young age of 18. I was a lead operator on an automated electroplating production line in a printed circuit board manufacturing plant in Orlando, Florida. I had 6 operators that reported to me. That was 1979, a little less than a year before I joined the US Navy.

In boot camp I was immediately placed into a leadership position, responsible for 20 other recruits as a section leader. I’ve been in a leadership position, one way or another, ever since then. I have definitely learned a bunch, and I’ve “seen them come and seen them go” so to speak.

That’s right. I’ve observed many a leader both succeed and fail at the task. There have been plenty of leaders above me in an organization that just didn’t get it. I’ve worked with many people in leadership positions at my level that didn’t get it. And, I’ve led many a leader along the way that also didn’t get it. It has always amazed me how few and far between are the people who really understand the fundamentals of good leadership.

So what is it that most people who call themselves leaders don’t get? It’s pretty simple really, but very difficult to actually do. I remember in the late ‘80s when I was working as a manufacturing engineer at a small startup company in Boulder, Colorado, one of my co-workers had a poster hanging in his cubicle. It read, “Warning – Due to a shortage of robots, human beings are performing all assembly operations and they react very unpredictably when abused.” Needless to say, this little reminder that as leaders we deal with real people stuck with me.

The bottom line is this; leadership boils down to what we do, not the results of a spiritual gifts assessment or Myers-Briggs survey. These are good tools to help evaluate an individual and their leadership “potential,” but they do not tell us whether or not a person is good at leadership. Going to school, no matter how advanced the degree(s) or prestigious the school, doesn’t make a person a good leader. Good leadership is about putting others first with your actions. It’s about creating a culture that treats people with respect and encourages them to take risks.

What are the fundamentals of good leadership?

Over the past couple of years I’ve put my thoughts on the fundamentals of good leadership in writing. Although I’m not done yet, here’s a list of links to those posts. Read, consider, and comment. I’m interested in hearing what you think about these fundamentals and what you might add to the list.