7 Things Great Leaders Do to Be Courageous

 I learnt bad leadership is usually in part a result of fear. Here are some concrete ways to get beyond it. Here are seven practices of great leadership that you can adopt to begin changing everything.

Embrace the intelligence of the team

Smart leaders recognize that no one can know everything. Instead, they look for and welcome intelligence in team members. You want a variety of experiences and bodies of knowledge to bring to bear on the organization's goals. Encourage people to be smart and active in planning and execution.

Give people authority and responsibility

You can't know everything and you can't do everything. Micromanagement never makes sense when you can train people and then depend on them. Team members need responsibility to grow and have a good relationship to the organization and they need the authority to undertake the responsibility.

Make most of your job to help others

You lose nothing when you help others shine. You may not take the bows every time, and that's fine. It's like being a good parent. Your children will grow into adulthood and responsibility, and yet everyone knows it would have been impossible without your help. Enjoying the satisfaction of enabling the best in others is part of being a true grownup.

Keep an eye on something bigger than you

Fear is strongest when you focus on yourself. Every difficult and setback gets tied into your sense of yourself. Of course you will be scared because problems get wrongly turned into attacks on your very existence. Get the focus on something bigger and more important than yourself, like the goals of the organization and principles of being a good leader.

Remember goals enable means

We usually think of means in relationship to goals. You create and steer an organization to achieve the end. But you can also think of goals as what enable means. You want your team to do great things. If you achieve a big goal, were you planning to dissolve your company? Probably not. Goals become reasons for the people in the organization to thrive and work together.

Love the process more than the results

As part of enabling the means, enjoy the process. The true pleasure of leadership isn't in the results, because their importance will always pass, but in the process of working toward achievement. You oversee and are responsible for a thriving community, and success comes in its everyday management and cultivation. When you don't get the results, go back to the process and find what needs to happen differently.

Recognize that mistakes are essential

Fear of mistakes comes with fear of failure. However, you need mistakes if you're to do the real job of leadership and help improve the organization. Find problems through the evidence of mistakes, work with the team to fix them, and then keep moving on. Where's the fun if everything goes right?