A leader who empowers.

Think about someone who you think is a leader, and how do they lead?

What do you think of those who are leaders for you?

Do people empower you to get work done, to achieve your goals and the companies goals? People strive more when they are given responsibility and the tools to accomplish things. We want to have purpose and meaning to what we do. It is finding that purpose even in the most mundane of tasks that makes leaders.

As human beings we need to be allowed the opportunity to take the reigns, push ahead, forge the direction, and carry the responsibility of performing the tasks before us well. I believe there is an innate part of us that when given responsibility, wants to step up and accomplish those goals and tasks. When we grab hold of that responsibility and that desire to achieve these goals, we will increase our chances of success ten fold, improve moral, and grow yourself and the others around you. Though we may not always achieve success, the chances of success are so much greater than if we don’t grab hold of the reigns and the responsibility.

Leaders have the responsibility of providing their employees, volunteers, or whoever with the tools and means necessary to reach those goals. Empower people to give you one mile and you might find that they will go two miles. Help everyone to reach their greatest potential by empowering them to achieve new heights and reach goals that will grow not only the company or organization, but also themselves.

Passionately leading.

Passion.

Are you passionate about something?

To be a leader, you have to be passionate about something. Passion creates the necessary goal that gives you the direction that you need. Once the passion and the direction have been set by you, people can then follow.

Stay true to your passion.

A passion is something that you are almost obsessive about. It brings focus, drive, energy, and purpose. Build your business, blog, speeches, etc. around what you are passionate about. You will feed off of the energy and drive that you passion brings to encourage others to be more passionate.

Passion is infectious.

Everyone knows that its easier to laugh when other people laugh, and when one person starts laughing usually everyone else starts laughing. Passion has the same effect. When you are passionate about something, you begin spreading the message or your passion to others who then become passionate about the same thing and then spread it to their network.

Passion needs to be real.

It needs to be true. Everybody can tell when someone is faking a speech or is trying to show that they are more passionate than they really are. Don’t go after something just because you think its cool. Go after your passion even if that is talking about the different kinds of paper in the world. If you are real and true to your passion people will see that and will become one of your followers or you will encourage them to be a leader in whatever their passion is.

What it takes.

Integrity.

It is absolutely crucial to being a leader. Leaders are tasked with the responsibility of guiding people and directing them to where they should go, whether it be in business, the community, families, church, or wherever.

As a leader people rely on you and trust you to lead them down the correct path and to protect them. A leader of integrity keeps that trust from his or her followers and will not allow anything to lead them off the path that was set.

For a leader to lead others well he first has to lead himself well. A leader knows the importance of not compromising and understands that if he does compromise on his beliefs and the beliefs of the people he his leading, he is hurting not only himself, but the people he is leading also.

Integrity is never forsaking your beliefs and the beliefs of the people that you are leading. Never compromise and never lead by skill. Lead by character and integrity. People will follow because they trust you to respect them.

It won’t always be easy, and you won’t always succeed 100%. But persevere through adversity and no matter how much you want to compromise…don’t. The minute that we lose sight of protecting our own integrity and character is the minute that we lose sight of protecting and directing and leading those following.

A leader of integrity understands that he or she will make mistakes. They don’t try to hide them, or gloss over them, but rather they admit them and accept the consequences of their mistake. This builds trust.

Integrity doesn’t mean always being perfect. It means that no matter what you will do the right thing, even if doing the right thing is admitting that you did the wrong thing.

“A life lived with integrity – even if it lacks the trappings of fame and fortune is a shinning star in whose light others may follow in the years to come.” – Denis Waitley

What does it take to be a leader?

Chick-fil-A Leadercast is going on today and sadly I am not there. Maybe next year!

For those of you who don’t know what the Chick-fil-A Leadercast is, its a conference where some of the greatest leaders gather to give advice and presentations on how to be effective leaders.

Some of the speakers were John Maxwell, Jim Collins, Chip Heath, Jim Goodnight, and many more!

By following the progress of the Leadercast through blogs and posts about it, it has gotten me thinking about a question.

What does it really take to be a successful leader?

I would love to hear some of your thoughts. We are all leaders to one degree or another and I think for us to be successful in life we need to hone in on our leadership skills.

What do you think?