The Primed Mines Of Leadership
Strive to guide people without diminishing your ability to empathize with them.
Kevin Scott seemed not to understand with absolutely no one of his team. His orders were too difficult to execute. He simply asked too much from people. At one of the training, things took a serious turn when one of his subordinates, Sailor, wanted to give him a lesson. Before things to run even more, Colonel Cal Rhodes, the initiator of the rescue mission of prisoners in Vietnam, intervened between the two ones. He took Kevin aside and told him:
- These people are veterans, Kevin. They cannot be treated as new recruits. You must earn their respect...
Scott has recorded every word of Cal, but he became confused, and at one point he fell on contemplation. It might, indeed, to be so incompetent with people? he wondered to himself.
If you saw the movie „Uncommon Valor (1983)” then you probably remember what amazing effect has had the words of Cal. Scott changed his attitude instantly. He became a totally different person.
What is the consequence of the finality of the cause that made you restrain your expression of certain emotions, and from this consequence can an absolutely binding decision to receive or give an unforgettable moment be obtained?
The key to leadership lies in discovering the cause that can affect you, or in constantly updating your self-information to gain a status of equality between what you want to convey and what your interlocutor perceives. Remember that there is a big difference between what you want to hear to satisfy your vanity and what is true, even if it hurts to feel guilty about the mistake you made.
To know how heavy it is the burden you have, it is necessary first to examine yourself. It will come easier for you to understand the dimension of your leadership if you are searching by yourself for your weaknesses. You can realize your own potential for leadership by the attitude that others take towards you in critical or problematic situations when they lose patience or interest, or when they lose any chance to comprehend you.
Kevin knew that he had to choose between two paths: either to disobey Cal’s friendly advice and to anger even more against the people under his authority, which would be greatly damaged his leadership, or to find an amicable way to work with them.
Remember that in leadership, the ability to empathize with the other people is synonymous with finding a compromise between what they want to hear from you and what you want from them. Nothing leads to create strong links between two or more people than achieving success together. Mutual success is based on long friendships. Do not ever lose sight of this, future leader !
The finality of the cause that made you restrain your expression of certain emotions refers to a hopeless situation in which you can find yourself when the Ego removes your consciousness from the “Now” moment and places you in the next moment of your becoming, when you are at the point of accepting that you apologized.
The Primed Mines of Leadership are common causes that can trigger an unwanted event. And the aftermath of this event and the control measures to prevent the onset of risk and to limit the effects have a lot to do with how you react to change.
Leadership is like a minefield. If you manage to pass the land on which you build your own model to follow, avoiding all the mines that deplete your resources and limit your potential, you will be praised by all those around you, even the skeptics. Even so, if you stepped on any mine, it is all over with your leadership. A single mistake, an uncertainty or any wrong decision, makes you crash in the eyes of all and fell into the black oblivion.
Are you familiar with digital cameras? If yes, then you know that the function Active Mode removes the effect of "blurring" to photo and video image, especially when the capture is done in motion, at large opening.
Well, when it comes to getting along with people and to develop deep relationships with them, you must remove the effect of "blurring" your emotional intelligence, especially when you are watching the imposition of certain rules or principles, or some unexpected steps that they have to go through for the best possible course of business, and to achieve common objectives.
In other words, strive to lead people without diminishing your ability to empathize with them.
Conclusion: As a leader, it is essential to know how to avoid every situation that jeopardizes your role and position that you own. In other words, you need to know to avoid those “mines” put in your way, and that detonated, can break down or reduce your impact on others. The explosion of a single mine it is enough for people to lose confidence in you. Furthermore, you risk losing definitely the influence on them. That mine is the inability to empathize with people. Any reduction of this capacity can lead to major failures in leadership.
