The Language of Leaders

The Language of Leaders:

For all leaders going after success, check your progress against these important leadership steps towards actualizing any vision:

1. Know your vision. 

• Where are you going? What are you doing? What problem are you solving? What need are you meeting? 

2. Develop a strategy to accomplish the vision. 

• How are you getting there? How are you doing it? How are you solving it? How are you meeting the need?

3. Get buy-in into vision and strategy.

• Find out who is with you - not just who is there, but who is down for the cause. 
• Who wants to go where you're going - do what you're doing - solve what you're solving and meet the need you're meeting? 

4. Get to know your team.

• What talents, skills, and strengths do the people surrounding your vision bring to the table? What does each individual specialize in? What can you ask her to do that will end in success? What shouldn't you ask him to do so that he does not fail?
• Show them the real you so that they will open up and show you the real them. Authenticity is comfortable around authenticity - realness respects realness. 

5. Learn what motivates yourself and your team and provide the motivation.

• What is it that makes you want to keep moving forward? Feed that to yourself. 
• What is it that makes your individual team members want to keep moving forward? Feed that to your team.

6. Strategically align your team's individual talents with your corporate strategy. 

• How can what your team members specialize in help get your vision where it is trying to go? 

7. Celebrate small victories.

• What went well? 
• When a piece of the vision takes shape, make it a big deal. 
• When an individual successfully applies their talents to the strategy, make it a big deal.

8. Measure progress and give feedback balanced with grace & truth. 

• What should we start doing?
• What should we keep doing?
• What should we stop doing?

9. Correct issues and keep it moving. 

• What is the poison trying to attack your strategy? Remove it.
• What is the bottleneck? What's making progress come slowly? Open it up. 
• Have tough conversations. 
• Make sure that leaders are leading - if they're not, correct them or remove them.
• Find the root cause of the issue - ask "why" repeatedly to get to the root cause of the issue.

10. Never give up - actualize your vision!  

• Success isn't easy or everyone would have it. 
• Work hard, then put in hard work. 
• When you want to stop, start.
• Quit quitting - stop stopping - give up on giving up - do not not do!
• Keep going until you see in your reality what you saw in your mind. 

Contributed by: Pastor Razel Jones