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The Accidental Leader
George Needham discusses the distinctions between leadership and management, emphasizing that effective leadership involves action and influence rather than titles. He offers ten tips for emerging leaders, including mentorship, networking, and self-awareness, while also addressing common pitfalls. The presentation concludes with a call for courageous followership and resources for further learning.
The Accidental Leader
- 1. Presented by GeorgeNeedham Director-Designate, Delaware County District Library at the Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference September 30, 2015
- 2. Advice from theBard Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. William Shakespeare, Twelfth-Night, II, v, 159
- 3. Leaders and Managers Youmanage things; you lead people. Admiral Grace Hopper Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Peter Drucker Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. Stephen Covey
- 4. Leadership vs management: Afalse dichotomy
- 5. A Mad Menexample
- 6.
- 7. So what’s anaccidental leader?
- 8. Leadership is nota title
- 9. Leading from anyposition
- 10.
- 11.
- 12. Ten pieces ofadvice
- 13. Tip #1: Geta mentor
- 14. Tip #2: Developyour networks
- 15. Tip #3: Asklots of questions
- 16. Tip #4: Knowyourself
- 17. Tip #5: KeepLearning
- 18. Tip #6: Surroundyourself with diverse people and ideas
- 19. Tip #7: Tryfor work/life balance
- 20. Tip #8: Becrystal clear on roles and expectations
- 21. Tip #9: Learnhow to negotiate effectively
- 22. Tip #10: Shareyour vision
- 23.
- 25. Oh, come on,it’s not that easy!
- 26.
- 27. Pitfall #1: Tryingto make everyone happy
- 28. Pitfall #2: Makingassumptions
- 29. Pitfall #3: Thebunker mentality
- 30.
- 31. Pitfall #5: Impossiblestandards
- 32. Pitfall #6: Puttingup with *$&@!
- 33. Pitfall #7: Responsibilitywithout authority
- 34. Pitfall #8: Tryingto go it alone
- 37.
- 38. “An action circlefor a common purpose”
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
- 42. Courage to participatein transformation
- 43. Courage to takemoral action
- 44. Courage to speakto power
- 45. Courage to listento followers
- 47.
- 48. Not a “MissionImpossible”
- 49. Pick your ownpath
- 50. Let’s continue theconversation George Needham, gneedham@delawarelibrary.org, 740-363-7277
- 51. References • Online self-evaluationtools • http://www.myersbriggs.org/ • http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp (Myers-Briggs knock off) • http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/ • http://www.birkman.com/ • http://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/ • Harvard Business Review free materials • Newsletters at https://email.hbr.org/preference-center/ • Other free Harvard Business Review resources at http://blogs.hbr.org/ • The Courageous Follower Standing Up to & for Our Leaders, 3rd ed., by Ira Chaleff. Berrett- Koehler, 2009. A summary is available at http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=479212 • “Leading from Any Position: Influencing Library Effectiveness and Responsiveness,” archived Infopeople webinar at http://tinyurl.com/p47clu7 • “How to Gain Role Clarity and Lead from Any Position,” by Prasad Kaipa, Navi Radjou, and Sarwath Khizrana. http://tinyurl.com/q4rjmgo • “10 Steps You Can Take To Become A Successful Young Leader At Work.” Slide show with text at http://www.forbes.com/pictures/gfid45mhj/youre-never-too-young-to-be-a-leader/ • Lead Positive: What Highly Effective Leaders See, Say and Do, by Kathryn D. Cramer. Jossey- Bass, 2014. Links checked September 3, 2015
Editor's Notes
- #2 Ask questions when you think of them, although I have also built in a couple of spots where we can stop to catch our breath and discuss.
- #3 If you are one of the people who are born great, this preconference is probably not for you. If you are one who aspires to greatness, stick around; something here might help you. But if you are one of those who is having greatness thrust upon you, you’re in the right place. And you are in a very large club! Most leaders really aren’t born. They are shaped by their upbringing, by the circumstances in which they find themselves, by education, and by experience.
- #4 Maybe one way to think of this is to think about the famous five W’s of journalism: who, what, where, when, and why. In this construct, management deals with the what, the where, and the when; and leadership deals with the why and the who. VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: Both leadership AND management are vital to the effective operation of ANY organization.
- #5 Leadership without management tends to lead to chaos. Management without leadership tends to lead to institutional rigidity.
- #6 Some people love Game of Thrones or Sons of Anarchy. Some people are Trekkers. Me, I’m a huge fan of the late, lamented AMC series Mad Men. This series is about an advertising agency in New York in the early 1960s, and the difference between leadership and management is clearly delineated in these two characters, at least in the ways they were portrayed in the first few seasons of the run. Don Draper is the creative genius in the agency. He imbues the people who work with him with an overriding sense of mission and empowers his people with the tools they need to succeed, even though he would never put it in those terms. He also skips internal meetings, and has no idea about how the billings work or what everyone in the agency is doing at any given time. Joan Harris is the incredibly efficient office manager for the agency, the indispensible manager who knows where everything is stored, both in filing cabinets and between people’s ears. She knows the nuts and bolts of how the agency runs, and where the bodies are buried, but she has no role or interest in the history or direction of advertising as a business.
- #7 OK, we need to state a few very important facts before we get started in earnest. Review each premise in turn Most MLS librarians are going to be in charge of something some day, probably sooner than they expect. The world needs great leaders, great managers, and great followers. Whether you want to be a leader, a manager, or a follower, learn the craft. In fact, learn all three crafts, because at different times in your life, you will play each role. Your job is to play each role well. Today’s program is going to focus on leaders and followers, rather than managers.
- #8 Accidental leaders are people who find themselves in leadership roles that they hadn’t planned for, or that they may have planned for but weren’t expecting so soon. The purpose of this program is to give those folks a few tools to use to make the work a little more effective, and maybe even a little easier. Today’s program is also intended as a sort of Leadership 101 Overview, a way of looking at the various tips, pitfalls, and options of being a leader. And we’ll also talk a little about being a successful follower.
- #9 Too many people think that leadership only comes when someone is anointed with a title and a fancier work space. CLICK TO GET RED CIRCLE Nothing could be further from the truth. We have all known people with big, important titles and big, important salaries who couldn’t lead a cat to a litter box. And we have all known people who can just naturally lead other people to all sorts of things. On the positive side, I think of my six year old granddaughter who can corral groups of other children better than most kindergarten teachers. On the negative side, you can see leadership turn into something insidious, like a cult or a destructive political movement.
- #10 Real leaders take leadership with or without the formal accoutrements of authority. Sometimes this is moral leadership, like Gandhi or King or Corazon Aquino or Malala Yousafzai . Doesn’t need to be this dramatic. Can be someone who takes leadership in an automation project in a library or when there is sudden disruption in the regular workflow. OLA in 1995, for example.
- #11 If ever there was a time that proves the rule that talk is cheap, it is when someone pretends to be a leader by talking his or her way through it. Leadership is about how you behave, not about what you say. Some keystones: How do you treat people? Do you ask other people to do things that you wouldn’t do yourself? Do you behave in an ethical manner? Do you have a sense of humor? Can you handle stress, and a whole lot of things happening at once, without getting crazy or grumpy? Are you committed to what you’re doing, or are you always looking for an escape hatch? Do you show self-confidence? Not arrogance, confidence. In fact, you can learn a lot by watching how a bad leader behaves. Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years came from watching a couple of my bosses.
- #12 Relax. Basically, most people want you to succeed. They want their organizations to survive and prosper. They will help you if asked. Gary Houk: “No one ever died of bad cataloging.”
- #13 Next, I’m going to offer ten tips for new leaders. Please note that these are not in any order other than how I thought of them. You don’t need to do all of them, and you don’t have to do them in a specific order. But I do think that all of them can be useful to new leaders who are feeling their way in this unfamiliar country.
- #14 Mentors provide insights, and help you discover your own strengths and weaknesses. So how do you find a mentor? Ask. Mentoring can be formal or informal, as simple as getting a card at a conference and sharing e-mail, or as complex as a multi-year relationship that starts in school, in your first job or at a leadership event like what’s being planned for next year here in Arkansas. And don’t forget what I said about watching bad leaders for ideas about what to avoid. Consider these people your Bizarro World mentors.
- #15 Everyone needs people to rely on, and it makes sense to have more than one network. Most people want to have a network of library peers, people who have similar background and interests and who can converse knowledgably about library concerns. These are the folks you might find on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, on PUBLIB or other listservs, or at conferences, or, again, in your graduating cohort at library school. But you also want to have a “civilian” cohort, people who may be leaders in your community, or who may be in a Facebook group or on LinkedIn, who can provide you with an outside view of our sometimes hermetically sealed world.
- #16 There are several reasons to ask lots of questions. First, assuming that you are an accidental leader, there’s a whole lot you don’t know. Pretending that you do can undermine your credibility. And credibility is your currency as a leader, not power. Second, it is a sign of respect, for the people you are leading and for your own boss. Getting to know your co-workers as human beings is a great way to show empathy and to understand their challenges and aspirations. Third, it is a good way to start your mentoring relationship or to bring people into the network. The best conversations in my life have frequently started with simple questions about the work I do or why I do it that way. (Andy: “What does the library without books look like?”)
- #17 Recommend taking one or more of the leading self-understanding tests that are available. You can take some or all of these tests or at least reasonable plagiarisms, online. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) The Enneagram The Birkman Method DiSC If you ever get involved in a leadership institute, odds are you will use one or more of these as a way of starting the conversation. I’ve included links to the tests at the end of this slide set. PERSONALITY TESTS ARE NOT DESTINY!
- #18 This seems so obvious I almost didn’t include it. But this is one of those concepts that can’t be stressed too often. Leaders are constantly replenishing their storehouses of knowledge in order to have something new to bring to the table. Ask group: What are some good sources of continuing education and information? WebJunction and other online services like Khan Academy and TED Talks State associations State libraries ALA PLA Library schools Conferences Non-library related news sources And one thing I would suggest is to take that last bullet point very seriously. We tend to get tunnel vision in this field. We focus so closely on libraries that we forget how much we are affected by the rest of the world. By seeing the ways the rest of the world is changing, and transposing those theme into the key of library, we can bring fresh approaches to implementing outside ideas within our profession.
- #19 OK, I’m not only a Mad Men fan, I’m also a Trekker. Sign me up for Nerds Anonymous. Diversity isn’t just about equal opportunity laws. Diversity is about bringing the full spectrum of experiences and ideas to bear on the questions and issues you face. Surrounding yourself with people who have grown up in different environments, learned at different schools (or without traditional formal education at all), and experienced different life situations can enrich your experience. It creates the richer environment that fosters better decision making. It’s been my experience that if two people in a management structure always agree, you really don’t need one of them.
- #20 The whole issue of work/life balance has come back into the mainstream conversation again with the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In last year and this year’s Unfinished Business by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Unfortunately, as usual, it’s being framed as a women’s issue, or mother’s issue, instead of being framed as one that affects everyone who is trying to balance the need to earn a paycheck with the need to maintain some sanity. Given our world of “always on” communication, the line between work and life can blur pretty quickly. And for many of us, that’s not a problem. But when work muscles out fun, then your work/life balance might be getting a little out of whack. A big part of leadership is being able to draw on a large variety of experiences, learning, and personal contacts as you make decisions and try to bring people along on your journey. You owe it to yourself and the people whom you lead to make sure that that variety is as wide and as deep as possible, and that means having a full life, not just a work life.
- #21 Since this is not a preconference on communications, I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I think it’s important to mention. One of the ways leaders succeed is by laying out a clear and compelling case for the directions they want to take. Being very clear on where you’re going, and what you expect of the people around you, is vital. This is why there are all those books and all those seminars and webinars you can take on communication theory and practice. This is a good area to invest some time in. I’ll leave you with one very basic but quite useful tool: the paraphrase. It is a very respectful and useful practice to say to someone, “What I hear you saying is…” and then repeating in your own words what you believe you’ve heard. Finish by asking, “Is that right?”
- #22 You don’t really know everything, even if you are the leader. So that means you are going to need to learn how to negotiate fairly and honestly. How do you get to a win-win situation, if it’s possible? How do you recognize that some situations are not win-win, but still create an opportunity for both parties to walk away feeling respected and understood? Again, this is an area about which many books, videos, and courses are available. Fake win-wins: The Library of Michigan v. OCLC My one practical tip here is always leave something on the table for the other person. Negotiation is almost never a zero sum game, no matter what some barracudas try to tell you. You will almost always have to deal with the same people again on a different issue. Do you want them coming back looking for revenge or remembering a fair shake? Do you want to win the argument or the person?
- #23 Martin Luther King did not stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on that memorable day in August, 1963, and announce, “I have a spreadsheet…” The importance of helping people understand why this is important to you, to really know what you believe and what motivates you, cannot be overemphasized. This is perhaps the most personal, most vulnerable part of being a leader, but it is one that is very effective. This I Believe statements: PCDL experience “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince
- #24 This sounds sort of Pollyannaish, but if your background is as a children’s librarian, you might think of it this way, “I think I can, I think I can,” or even better, “I think WE can, I think WE can…” If you are too cool for that school of thought, <CLICK > you can also consider the academic research featured in this title, <CLICK> Kathryn D. Cramer’s Lead Positive: What Effective Leaders See, Say and Do. Among her insights: Spend more time focusing on what’s going right that what’s going wrong. Nurture people, don’t destroy them. Remember that a leader’s words—the choice of words, when they are spoken, and how they are spoken—have great impact. FCDL Lower Level story Leadership is both an intellectual and an emotional exercise, and if you’re emotions are negative, this will color everything you do. Dr. Cramer says that an important point in leadership is to consider, “How do I want to be in this moment?” Angry? Impatient? Passive? Supportive? From the Harvard Business Review Management Tip of the Day, April 22, 2010: Too many leaders think they are adept at everything. Self-aware leaders know that they can't possibly have the skills and knowledge to do it all. Instead, they are dynamic, adaptable, and emotionally intelligent. Here are three ways to build your own self-awareness: Observe your own performance. Take note of the areas you excel in and those that need improvement. Share these observations with your team. Know what you don't know. Accept that there are areas you have little expertise in. Seek out a team that can help you fill in the gaps. Monitor your impact on others. Because so much of work is about relationships, knowing how you affect others is a critical leadership skill. Manage your emotional responses and look for cues that you're building relationships, not destroying them.
- #25 OK, let’s stop here for a moment. Is there anything I’ve said so far that resonated with you? Anything you disagree with? Anything you’d like to discuss further? STOP HERE FOR BREAK
- #26 Actually, it is. But there are also several easy to fall into traps, and I will address those in the next section of this program. Did any questions arise during the break?
- #27 I’m about to describe eight pitfalls that can ensnare a new leader. Full disclosure: I have stepped into every one of these pitfalls myself. Leaders are not perfect.
- #28 The biggest mistake any leader can make is trying to make everyone happy. That’s not your job, and you will drive yourself right out of your mind trying to do that. Your job is to nurture a workplace where success can happen, to make sure people have the tools they need to be successful, and to create a positive environment. People are responsible for their own happiness. The other side of this coin is trying to be everybody’s friend. This is especially true when the accidental leader has been promoted to lead the people he or she used to work with. As a leader, you need to remember that your loyalty needs to be focused on the mission of the organization. This again may sound cold, but if you have developed your vision and brought people along, it should be obvious to everyone.
- #29 Trying to make assumptions, especially about other people’s motivations. How do you avoid making assumptions? Don’t confuse “can’t” with “won’t.” Don’t confuse incompetence with malice. And don’t assume either incompetence or malice without evidence. Don’t guess, ask.
- #30 If people start criticizing you, you can start to feel like you are in the bunker, and everyone is on your back. First, you need to realize that not everyone is really against you. Second, you need your network to help you gain some perspective. Third, get out and move around. Spy novelist John Le Carré once said “A desk is a very dangerous place from which to view the world.” Finally, remember everyone is in this together. A couple of years ago, an article in Newsweek described the constantly evolving relationship between President Obama and his then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. “In the beginning, she would say, ‘They want this; they want that’”—meaning the White House. “It took a while for her to start saying ‘we.’”
- #31 You’re not Superman, or The Human Torch for that matter. You can only push yourself so far. When you start to feel like your time is no longer your own, or if there is no time for your friends or family, or if you are going home every night so exhausted that all you can do is collapse into warm bed and a cold martini, you are a candidate for burn out. For me, the first symptom of burn out is when I lose my sense of humor. For you, it might be a lack of interest in things you usually enjoy, whether it’s cooking, Sons of Anarchy, your cat, mystery novels, golf, whatever. One remedy for burn out is to remember that the world is not really resting on your shoulders. Burn out frequently stems from bad perspective. You begin to think that you have to do everything yourself, that you don’t have anyone around you who can be trusted to carry out the organization’s mission. If that’s true, you might want to consider resigning. Part of your job as a leader is to ensure that the whole organization does NOT revolve around you, that your team has been developed to the point where they can pick up when someone is gone. If you really don’t have anyone else who can pick up when you are not around, you have set your goals too high. Again, you need to get realistic about the capacity of yourself and your team.
- #32 While you are the leader, there is a strong temptation to closely monitor and interfere with how people carry out their work. Avoid this temptation. Focus on results, not practices. Be available to consult with your people, and be there to encourage, and to ask questions, but don’t overdo it. This not only frees up your time, it also builds self-confidence in your colleagues and staff members.
- #33 If you are confronted with people who consistently tear you down, resist you, or try to undermine you, you have several options. If they are outside your chain of command or outside your organization, ignore them. If they are inside, either co-opt them, or isolate and neutralize them, or remove them. It sounds cold-blooded, but it really does boil down to a few simple options. Two ways to co-opt: “How can we…?” either on its own or combined with “This is the route I’m taking. I want you with me. Will you help?” Whatever path you take, and no matter how much you may dislike confrontation, ignoring insubordination is not a good idea. The ripple effects can be huge. You can get to the point where your ideas and direction are ignored and your best efforts are undermined.
- #34 Be careful to neither accept responsibility without authority from a higher up, nor to delegate responsibility without giving the necessary authority to carry out the assignment. You need to have both to be successful. This is one of the ways the impossible standards I mentioned earlier comes in. One of the mistakes a rookie leader may make is to try to micromanage the way in which people carry out the tasks that need to be done. You need to be generous with advice and time but miserly with direction. Also, listen carefully when you receive direction from your supervisor. Make sure that he or she is giving you the authority you need to carry out the directions. For example, if needed, make sure that you have the authority to improvise in the plans, to make assignments to the people you’ll be working with, and to do course correction as needed.
- #35 The idea that “it’s lonely at the top” is a self-fulfilling prophecy that can poison the whole leadership experience. It’s only lonely at the top if you isolate yourself. Please don’t do that…reach out. In all probability, there is nothing that you’re going to face in your leadership experience that someone has not faced before. And even if there is a unique situation, having a network of other leaders, either within the field or outside, will give you a wealth of parallel experience to draw upon. Loneliness as a leader is nearly always self-inflicted.
- #36 Time for another question and discussion break. Before jumping to the next slide… After all this time, you may be having second thoughts about leadership…
- #37 In fact, you may be starting to think that a leadership role is not for you at all. There’s nothing wrong with that.
- #38 The world needs leaders and followers. Ira Chaleff’s book, The Courageous Follower, has been an eye opener for me as I have thought about the changing nature of leaders and followers. In my own career, I’ve bounced back and forth between the two roles fairly regularly. Chaleff has helped me to understand where I’m doing it right, and where I need to rethink my own behavior. Chaleff makes a clear distinction early in the book: Follower is not synonymous with subordinate. A subordinate reports to an individual of higher rank and may in practice be a supporter, an antagonist, or indifferent. A follower shares a common purpose with the leader, believes in what the organization is trying to accomplish, wants both the leader and organization to succeed, and works energetically to this end.
- #39 Leaders and followers work together to accomplish the purpose of the organization. Together, they create a virtuous, mutually fulfilling circle of action. You can’t have leaders without followers any more than you can have authors without readers or chefs without diners. Chaleff described five dimensions of courageous followership in the first edition of his book, and then added two more in subsequent editions, as his model was field tested and studied. Before we move forward, I want to stress again that I have not demonstrated all of these dimensions of courage in my career. There have been times when I didn’t act in a courageous manner, and I’ll own up to those as we go through here. I won’t put you on the spot, but you’re more than welcome to share, too, if you want. Let’s review the dimensions.
- #40 Assuming responsibility means understanding that the success of the organization and of yourself rests in your own hands. It means that you develop a mutualistic approach to your role in the organization, not a paternalistic view of the leader or of some outside party who controls your destiny. Assuming responsibility may mean initiating action that supports the mission, even without explicit authority from the leader; your permission derives from the value of the mission of the organization.
- #41 There is nothing wrong with the concept of service. Libraries are a service industry. And to be a courageous follower, it is important to understand that you are serving the purpose of the organization for which you work. This may mean taking some of the burden off the titular leader, even if it’s not in your job description. It also means looking for ways in which your strengths complement the leader’s shortcomings, so that you complete that virtuous circle I described earlier.
- #42 Are you willing to stand up for what is right? Can you help guide someone who has come off the rails back on, without being judgmental or hostile. If you have the courage to challenge, you are willing to risk temporary discomfort for the sake of longer term health of the organization. OLA in the mid-1990s: did not work hard enough to head off to what happened to BBM
- #43 When the times call for change, a courageous follower stays with it, supporting the leader and helping the rest of the team see the long term goal more clearly. A courageous follower has what James Carville, the political analyst calls “Stickin’,” his version of loyalty. Four different jobs in the 1990s? Did I stick? Probably not.
- #44 This is probably the hardest courage to muster, because there are so many facets and considerations to this issue. Are you taking a moral stand, or are you simply being a self-righteous prig? Are you defending the principles on which the library was founded or are you simply clinging rigidly to old ways of doing business? Are you sure of your grounds? Do you understand why the leader has chosen a certain course? A difference of opinion does not equate to a moral choice. EDWARD SNOWDEN VERSUS DANIEL ELLSBERG DEWEY VERSUS BSIG OR OTHER SHELVING APPROACHES PRINCIPLES VERSUS TECHNIQUES VERSUS OUTCOMES A moral stand can cost you your job. If the Board or the director is doing something illegal and you can’t get them to change their practices, will you get fired if report it? Maybe. Hell, probably. What if it’s not illegal, but you just don’t like what they’re doing, say, favoring one neighborhood over another, or putting too much of the library’s finding into one service at the expense of another? Chaleff added two additional forms of courage in the later versions of his book. The first of these additions is addressed to followers and is almost an extension of this dimension. The second calls on leaders to create a new social contract with followers.
- #45 Emperor’s New Clothes: Most subversive story in the whole Western literature canon In a hierarchy it takes courage and fortitude to try to get your ideas and into play. The bigger and more complex the hierarchy, the harder this can be. And it takes guts. Your boss, who may not have developed this courage, may not appreciate you going over his or her head. Finding the right person who can actually affect change is another challenge. But if there is something that needs to be communicated, the “boots on the ground” can frequently see the issues long before it finds its way to the senior leadership. Once it does make its way through the labyrinth, then what?
- #46 Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” How many scandals have we seen in the past few years that might have been prevented if senior staff had listened to the staff and line workers who were trying to tell them that there was a problem? The VW diesel software, 9/11, the Catholic Church abuse scandals, the NCAA and NFL issues about concussion injuries, the GM ignition switch problems: how many times do we have to see this play out to start to understand that leaders and followers need a new mutual commitment to sharing what they know and then acting on it? Which leads me to my last story…
- #47 Leadership is a process, not an event. And any process requires action. Five crows story
- #48 It may have already dawned on you that the courage needed to be a courageous follower is not unlike the courage that is needed to be a great leader: the courage to assume responsibility, to serve, to challenge, to participate in transformation, to take moral action, to listen across the hierarchy. This is not a coincidence. If we see leadership and followership as the drivers to achieve the organization’s purpose, it makes sense that these characteristics would work together. For some people, being second in command is a great way to rehearse for the top job; for others, being a solid consigliere is exactly where they want to be. Georgia, Chuck, Lace as examples of the first Bridget, Laura, Andy as examples of the second
- #49 No mice were harmed in the making of this presentation. But I think we need to realize that there is a role for all of us, adventurous Tom Cruise-style mice and country church mice alike!
- #50 Whether you were born to greatness, or you have achieved greatness, or you’ve had greatness thrust upon you, or if you would really prefer to support someone else’s greatness, there is a path that’s right for you. The key is to find your own path, not to be backed into a corner someone else selected for you. Neither Mom nor spouses, neither guidance counselors nor standardized tests can pronounce your destiny.
- #51 One more chance to share questions and observations… Thanks again for being here today, and have a great conference. Please stay in touch!