About the Author: Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Henry Cloud has written 45 books including Boundaries for Leaders.
Successful leaders share nine behavior patterns you can learn and apply.
Leaders aren’t certain types of people. They have varying personalities, though they share common patterns of behavior and responses to the world around them.Successful leaders display nine identifiable behaviors in their relationships, work and personal lives. They learn this pattern from different sources, including their family, work experience, mentors, therapists and spiritual practices.
“My firm belief is that once you learn this pattern, your life and the lives of those you lead will never be the same.”
You, too, can learn this pattern of leadership behaviors and responses, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you. Putting this pattern into effect will have an immense impact on your life and leadership journey, helping you move forward and learn from your mistakes. The nine core behaviors are the following.
1. Identify your hidden desires, dreams and potential.
Successful leaders figure out what they want, hope for and can achieve. Many people bury their inner desires and strengths, fearing the magnitude of their dreams, talent and potential. Perhaps a difficult past relationship made you feel that pursuing your goals wasn’t worthwhile, or your limited resources make you feel you must give up on your dreams. You have a choice: You can let fear rule your life and hide from the desire to reach your full potential or you can act like a leader and take the necessary risks to pursue your dreams.
“Leadership success is the process of digging up the treasures of the invisible soul in order to bring dreams, desires and talents into the visible world.”
Successful leaders don’t take careless risks; they take risks thoughtfully, diligently and cautiously.To uncover your buried talents and desires, take these steps:
Pay attention to what bothers you – Your inner voice might be telling you something.
Overcome negativity – Don’t passively accept negative feelings.
Don’t ignore persistent dreams – If you always wished for something, give it your attention.
Analyze your fantasies – Perhaps they’re saying something is missing from your life.
Confront obstacles and fears – What makes you hide from your full potential?
Don’t let envy confuse you – If you’re jealous of someone’s success, perhaps you’ve lost track of your own desires.
Pay attention to symptoms – Is your body trying to communicate something to you?
Seek community – Connect with a community of people who support you and your values.
Pray – Ask for help to manifest your full potential and dreams.
2. Don’t accept negativity. Direct your energy toward actions that trigger hope.
Successful leaders overcome aspects of their lives that make them feel negative, which can include those that are:
“Physical” – Clutter, junk and an overflowing email inbox have a deleterious impact on your environment.
“Relational” – Beware of people who influence you negatively.
“Emotional” – Avoid unnecessary worry or anxiety.
Time-based – Reconsider activities that don’t lead you in a productive direction.
Avoid letting negativity dominate your thoughts by fixing troublesome aspects of your
life – cleaning up clutter or cutting certain people out of your orbit – and ceasing to invest in hurtful or harmful relationships. Deal with negative issues head-on, rather than avoiding them. Avoidance will only make situations more painful and difficult to tackle later.
“Hope means investing time and energy toward results that you have solid reason to believe can be achieved.”
Stop investing your time and energy in a project, goal or relationship that was once important to you, but now triggers negative feelings. Reflect on whether you can still reasonably hope to reach a desired outcome. If you lack hope or know you’re stagnating, give yourself permission to direct your energy elsewhere.
3. Consider the future implications of your actions.
Good leaders consider the impact of their present actions on the future. Think beyond immediate causes and effects and anticipate the chain of events your behavior could trigger several steps into the future. Understand the long-term impact of avoidance when it comes to tasks you don’t feel like doing right now.
“Successful leaders know how each scene contributes to the film’s good end. They don’t see just one scene; they watch the whole movie to the end.”
Conjure an ideal version of your future. Imagine what different aspects of your life, such as your career or relationships, might look like if you achieved your dreams. Imagine this future in film-like detail. Plot the actions you have to take to achieve it in reality. Direct your actions each day toward reaching your desired future outcome.
4. Work to improve difficult situations, even when they are not your responsibility.
When skilled leaders face difficult situations, they seek solutions, even if they’re not to blame for the difficulties. Many of the issues business leaders encounter occur because people have a hard time relating to one another. Leaders must take action and proactively repair relationships, reflecting on whether they did anything to exacerbate the situation, taking corrective steps and apologizing when appropriate.
“Send Superman to the unemployment line. Get moving and do something!”
Sometimes, you’ll encounter angry people who harm or manipulate others. Draw their awareness to the problems they create. Ask how you can help them improve their situation, but create boundaries to protect yourself. Rid yourself of any guilt you might feel regarding problematic individuals. You don’t need their approval.
5. Achieve your biggest dreams through a series of incremental steps.
To achieve big goals, take small steps over time. Focus on the incremental steps you can take to reach your goals. For example, novelist John Grisham wrote his best-selling novel A Time to Kill while working a demanding day job as an attorney. He accomplished this by waking earlier in the morning for three years, writing his book over time. Don’t fall victim to the desire to have everything you want all at once, as you may invest in unsustainable schemes that waste your time, such as risky business deals and crash diets.
“All success is built and sustained just like a building is built, one brick at a time.”
Ignore negative self-talk that inhibits your growth toward your goals. You can tackle any situation – whether it’s overcoming depression or starting a new business venture – if you create incremental change one day at a time, as a successful leader would.
6. What you hate shapes your character as leader, so choose wisely.
Consider what you hate. Make sure those things reflect the opposing values you want to embrace. For example, if you tell others that you hate lying and harmful business schemes, they may see you as a dependable business partner who values the truth. If someone demonstrates a hatred of hard work, you might not select that person for a collaborative project. You show your character to others when you reveal what you hate – as well as its direct opposite.
“What we hate says a lot about who we are, what we value, what we care about. And how we hate says much about how we will succeed in business and life.”
Hate can protect you, prompting you to get rid of threats to the things you love and to safeguard the things you value. Clarify your values. Note the harmful things people do, and stand against those who engage in behaviors you despise. Show others respect, forgiveness and kindness, even when they’ve hurt you. Transform your hate into a constructive problem-solving force, rather than allowing it to create problems. Learn conflict-resolution skills and train yourself to be a better communicator.
7. Forget fairness; give back more than you receive.
You need more than fairness to create lasting business partnerships. In strong partnerships, people don’t keep a tally of what they get versus what they give. They offer more than they receive.Engage from a place of love – not anger – even if others fail to give you as much as you’d like. Ask what you think would help the other person most to improve the current situation. You will receive more in return and strengthen your partnerships. Help others when they make mistakes, and they’ll do the same for you.
“People who succeed in leadership and life do not go around settling scores. They do not even keep score.”
When people harm you, don’t give them what you think they deserve or indulge an immature desire for revenge. Focus on doing what’s right to rid yourself of any desire to harm someone else. When people treat you negatively, consider giving them the opposite treatment instead of returning their dislike.
8. Stop telling self-aggrandizing stories; practice humility instead.
Don’t pretend you accomplished more or are more impressive than you are. Embrace humility: apologize to people when you fail them; rid yourself of defensiveness and attitudes of entitlement; be considerate
of people working below you in the corporate hierarchy; and learn from your mistakes.
“Successful leaders fail just like everyone else. But it’s the way they handle their failure and imperfections that sets them apart.”
When they make mistakes, the best leaders quickly admit fault and accept feedback and critiques. Some people struggle to admit they’re wrong because they want others to see them as good or right. Strong leaders acknowledge their errors and work to correct them while being “humble givers” who offer wise advice and assistance to colleagues who’ve failed.
9. Don’t let your fear of others’ reactions control you.
Don’t let your concern about how other people might react to your choices steer your decision-making. For example, perhaps you need to lay someone off, confront someone or turn down an assignment because you morally disagree with it. Beware of feelings such as misplaced guilt, which can influence your decision- making process. For example, you may feel guilty accepting a promotion a colleague wanted or laying people off when you lack the budget to keep them.
Make choices based on what you believe is right, not on who may or may not get angry. Don’t let your desire to win approval influence your decisions. You can’t please everyone, so focus on upsetting the right critics. For example, if irresponsible, manipulative people don’t like your decisions, you’re probably being a good leader. If kind, honest and ethical people take issue with you, rethink your choices.
“To be a successful leader, you may not keep everyone around you happy. In fact, if you are successful in any arena of life, you are guaranteed to tick some people off!”
Know that you can turn to your spiritual practices as you apply the leadership patterns pivotal to success. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that prayer will help. If you practice honesty and moral principles, your life will yield positive results.
