Leadership Skills

Paul Orfalea gave the opening keynote at Stanford’s Entrepreneurship eConference.

* Leaders notice success around them.

When you see a line out the door of a small hotdog business, do you think about demand and profit margins or are “you just buying a hotdog”?

* Leaders see “what isn’t there”.

Don’t let your education, training, or privileges stand in the way of seeing what is, and isn’t, right in front of you.

* Leaders make ideas work for them.

Learn to feel comfortable with ambiguity. Act on ideas and make the tough decisions including saying “No” quickly rather than stringing people along.

* Leaders cultivate intuition.

Figure out how to manage people and help employees define success for themselves. If you prefer to manage things, you probably should not be a leader.

* Leaders know workers are the boss.

Workers are the ones face-to-face with the customers/beneficiaries and actually doing the work (and probably doing it way better than you could).

* Leaders remove obstacles.

Enable your workers to do their job and “leave the store”. Balance trust and verification – sometimes just the presence of the leader can destroy the confidence of a manager.

* Leaders understand the importance of being cheerful and uplifting.

You don’t have share all the bad news and have an “open kimono” all the time.

* Leaders sleep.

Sleep gives time for imprinting what you have learned during the day, and besides, no one wants to follow a leader who is tired and haggard.

* Leaders balance work, love, and play.

If you do all three, you’ll make better decisions. “All you workaholics, go drink some beer!”*

Came across this posting on http://www.socialedge.org/ by Jill Finlayson