A Blog about Leadership

Robert Francis “Bobby” Kennedy

Today is the day that 40 years ago Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. I don’t like to refer to these circumstances as anniversaries, because an anniversary is a good occasion like in marriage. The assassination of a leader is a dark circumstance in our nation’s history.

Bobby Kennedy, as he was known, was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and served as US Attorney General during his brother’s administration. From 1965 until his assassination, was a US Senator from New York. In the early morning hours of June 5th, 1968, he won the California Democrat Primary and after giving his speech he was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Bobby Kennedy stood for issues of civil rights, racial and economic justice, against the Vietnam War, and supporting foreign policy of non-aggression.

Quote about failure from Bobby Kennedy:
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

Blogging about failure on a website about leadership may strike some as odd, but I find it important for leaders to understand the role that failure plays in developing leadership potential.

Below are articles that I have written about failure:

• 3-Steps for How to Respond to Failure
• Achieve Success in a New Year
• Committing to not Fail and Learning to Succeed
• Learning from Failure through Interest and Focus with Donald Trump and Winston Churchill
• Persevering and Success after Mistakes and Failures with Peter Drucker and John Maxwell
• Quote about Success and Failure from Sir Winston Churchill
• The Story about a Leader who Failed much but Succeeded in Greatness

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Harold Geneen was a businessman who immigrated to the United States from England with his parents as an infant. During his career, he was the Chief Executive Officer of two major corporations – Raytheon and ITT.

I always enjoy a good quote. I have taken inspiration and thought critically about several of Harold Geneen’s quotes. I’ve never read any of his books (please don’t interpret this as any consideration other than I have a limited amount of time to read and too many other books on my shelf).

Quote about Leadership from Harold Geneen:
“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.”

I think this quote may be a bit subject to critique, but in general I do agree that “leadership cannot really be taught.” Leaders can be developed and mentored, but learning leadership is the responsibility of the individuals themselves. Learning leadership does not come from a book (or a blog, but please continue to read LeadershipJot.com!). Leadership is learned from practice and experience.

One thing that all leaders have in common is a lifetime of experience. The younger the leader is the more immature their leadership potential. The more mature the leader is the stronger their leadership potential. However, don’t judge a leader by his age. Barrack Obama may be significantly younger than Hillary Clinton or John McCain, but you cannot say he is not an effective leader. He has been running a predominately successful campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for President against more experienced and more established candidates. His has inspired and influenced many potential constituents and he has definitely left his mark on US Presidential politics.

A leader, like Barrack Obama, who may be young or just younger than others, is a leader who gained significantly from his experience in a short period of time by emphasizing quality and not merely quantity. This may be attributed to intelligence, wisdom, or, perhaps, leadership potential.

At any rate, the quality of a leader’s experience is demonstrated in their effectiveness as a leader. The quality of experience may compensate for the quantity of experience.

(Please note: this is not an endorsement for Barrack Obama.)

Other quotes about leadership from Harold Geneen:
“Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.”
“Uncertainty will always be part of the taking charge process.”

Books by Harold Geneen:

• The Synergy Myth: And Other Ailments Of Business Today, with Brent Bowers, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-14724-4
• Synergy and Other Lies: Downsizing, Bureaucracy, and Corporate Culture Debunked, with Brent Bowers, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-20080-3
• Managing, with Alvin Moscow, Avon Books, ISBN 0-380-69986-9
• Alta dirección, with Alvin Moscow, Lectorum Pubns Inc, ISBN 84-253-1871-8

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Take a long hard look at your leadership positioning and your leadership potential as it is important to understand in order to know what you can accomplish as a leader.

Leadership Positioning

Leadership is not dependent on position. It is dependent on character and influence. Some require a position before they possess influence, while others possess influence by force of personality, strength of character, social interaction with others, and other sometimes-difficult-to-define attributes.

When you seek to position yourself as a leader you must have two critical elements:

1) A Clear Objective

Your objective can be in the form of a vision, like the corporate visions used by many CEOs, or your objective can be a defined purpose for seeking to influence another.

For more on vision, go to here: vision

2) Strong Leadership Potential

Leadership potential is developed over a long period of time. You have to create a foundation for leadership by building yourself – your character, your knowledge, your wisdom, your ability to determine, manage, and adapt to change, and your ability to communicate with others – both one-on-one and in groups.

See developing leadership for more.

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The Change in Focus

The lifelong timeline of a leader includes an important shift in focus and measuring success for this shift is well articulated by Jack Welch, the notable, former CEO of GE.

Leadership quote from Jack Welch:
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

Developing Leadership Potential

In the development phase, which starts “today” and continues lifelong, the focus is selfish in a sense. It’s about the leader – the leader’s knowledge, wisdom, understanding, communication skills, people skills, and the leader’s ability to influence.

The Practice of Leadership

The leading phase starts “tomorrow” and continues for as long as the leader is able to lead whether by position and/or by influence. The focus is on those you lead. The followers are not merely followers for I take the same position as Ralph Nader who stated, “I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers .” It may be better to say, the success of a leader is all about growing leaders.

For Success Today

• Your focus should be on developing your leadership potential.

For Success Tomorrow

• Your focus should be on developing the leadership potential of others.

This is the third and final entry for the series: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential.

In Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 1, I wrote about:

1. Recognize what you know that you do not know, write it down, and then learn.

2. Recognize there are things you don’t know that you don’t know and create a lifetime of continuous learning.

In Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 2, I wrote about:

3. Take time to write out your thoughts on leadership.

4. Learn daily and start learning today.

5. Practice leadership daily.

For this 3rd part, I want to mention an analogy from the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt that John Maxwell wrote about in his book, Leadership 101.

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

6. Know that you may fail, but, in the end, success as a leader is built on turning the stumbling blocks of failures into stepping stones on the journey of leadership development.

Nearly a decade ago, a generation-older friend of mine told me that I would probably be happier in life if I found a normal job, started a family, and just lived and lead in a community. I have always been focused on the highest offices of leadership – the leaders of nations and leaders of national, regional, and global change. I am a far distance from interacting or participating in such leadership roles, but I knew then as I know now, that I would rather run for higher offices, try to make the most difference, and fail in the process than to settle, compromise, or stifle my interests and ambitions.

I do not know what the next decade or three may bring in my life, but I am focused on learning as much about the world that we live in as I can, on creating a career foundation (financial and experiences) to be able to try, and then, when the opportunity is there, I will run for a public office – whether I win or fail, whether I can be a Senator or merely a candidate. I would rather try and fail, than to merely be normal and “happy.”

I encourage you to create a foundation for developing your leadership potential. Know that most important of all, you may fail, but that does not mean you are a failure. It means that you have created an experience in life to learn from.

To be a leader, you must take action. You must lead to be a leader.

The final thought today is from John Maxwell in another book of his, Failing Forward:

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” ~John Maxwell

Take action!

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Last week, I started the new weekly article series with How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential with the first two steps:

1. Recognize what you know that you do not know, write it down, and then learn.
2. Recognize there are things you don’t know that you don’t know and create a lifetime of continuous learning.

Continuous Learning

Today, I want to focus on leadership development by focusing on a lifetime of continuous learning.

John C. Maxwell on leadership development:
“Leadership develops daily, not in a day.”

Write, Learn, and Practice

Last Wednesday, I wrote Developing as a Leader Takes Time So Start Today.  In short, you will not be a great leader at the age of 27 and I know that I personally have many years ahead of me of learning and developing as a leader.  One major focus of my learning and developing is this blog where I can think about and write about leadership.  That powerful act of writing about leadership is a powerful act of developing my personal leadership potential; that is why I write this blog.

3. Take time to write out your thoughts on leadership.

You don’t need to start a blog or write a book, but take the time codify your thoughts.  You are invited to comment on my blog and I will engage you in a dialog to work together on developing leadership.

4. Learn Daily and start learning today

This is no more powerful force of change and development than a positive, daily habit.  Take learning, changing, and developing on an incremental, daily process to produce the greatest impact on your life.  You can read my blog, read other blogs, read some good books, or review leadership quotes.  What ever you do, do it daily.

5. Practice Leadership

I should add “daily.”  Each day, you will be presented opportunities to lead.  Tomorrow I am going to write about the most difficult place to lead (so come back tomorrow), but that place is somewhere that you are nearly every day.  For practicing leadership, there are four basic steps: To Be, To Develop, To Think, To Lead.

See also: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 1, How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 3.

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The new weekly series that I started on Monday is: How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential. John C. Maxwell writes prolifically about leadership and one point he continually emphasizes is that to be a leader it takes time, a lot of time, years and decades of time. While I agree, I also know as John does that to develop as a leader for tomorrow, you have to learn to be a leader today.

Leadership quote from Anthony Jay:
“The only real training for leadership is leadership.”

You can learn everything there is to know about leadership, you can read and memorize great quotes from leaders, you can study examples of leadership in practice, and you can codify your own leadership philosophy. At the end of it all, you will not develop as a leader until you “do” leadership.

It takes practice. Practice, as with anything, makes perfect. Leadership is an art, but it is a more complicated art than most recognize. There is no such thing as a scientific perfect in leadership, but rather an independent perfect that is unique to each and every individual leader.

To become a leader, start by being a leader and then practice, develop, improve, and mature over time, a lot of time, years and decades of time.

To start, you can follow my 7 Steps to Lead without Inherent Talent.

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Weekly Series:  Creating a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential

Last week I wrote about the foundation for leadership that the Founding Fathers of the United States created with the unique inclusion of Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution.  Today, I want to start a new weekly series about creating a foundation for leadership; every Monday for the next few weeks, I am going to write a new article for this series to expound on this topic.

Interesting quote from Donald Rumsfeld:
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

I think one of the most memorable quotes from the former Secretary of Defense is the one above.  I remember it mostly for the amount of comments it received on late night comedy shows, but while the quote is funny it is also presents an important nugget of knowledge for creating a foundation for developing leadership potential.

There are thing you know you do not know

We can each create an extensive list of the number of things we don’t know.  While we may have a lot of knowledge and have access to a great deal of information, too much information seems to be the one of the most common problems that we encounter.

When it comes to leadership, you need to codify, that is define and write down, what you know that you do not know.  You may not know how to deal with confrontation or how to motivate a person who is deep in despair, but if you know that you do not know, than you can create a foundation for learning that.  With experience (which is what I have to continually remind myself about), you will develop.  It takes time.

There are things that you don’t know that you don’t know

This is the most difficult foundation piece to create to developing leadership potential.  You need to discover what you do not know.  This can only be done through a lifetime of continuous learning and continuous improvement.

Next week Monday, I will continue to build on this series of creating a foundation for developing leadership potential.

 See also, How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 2, How to Create a Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 3.

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See also: How to Create the Foundation for Developing Leadership Potential Part 2