If you own a small business and you are waiting around for someone to point out your direction, you may be struggling to produce great results in that business. You may need to take charge and lead the way. Leaders understand this element to successful production. Leaders lead. They do not wait around for directions.
I know many leaders who are failing. That happens. Sometimes leaders get lost. Sometimes they choose to do the wrong stuff. Sometimes they get caught up with themselves. However, it is the leaders that will eventually find their way through the lost forest and produce something worthwhile. Leaders will come out in the end with better production, somewhere. That is what usually drives them to lead. Leaders who have a strong desire to produce success are the kinds of leaders that will eventually find their way out of a lost forest. They prefer to win more often. They learn how to make the right adjustments. They are not afraid to lead.
Now, there are leaders who lead to gain attention. Those are some of the dangerous ones. They lead to become the center of attention. They are not driven by successful productions. They are motivated by the attention they can generate. This is not usually the best kind of leader to have holding the steering wheel of your ship. They know where the helm is but they use it to become the center of attention. They may not, however, properly learn how to use the helm in a raging storm. A leader who loves success and winning will be the one who learns the art of steering the ship through tough storms. Great leaders know they must learn how to manage storms just as much as they enjoy managing in calm seas.
Great leaders do not come to your ship with softness. They do not live in soft worlds very easily. They have some hard edges they carry along their sides. They may be respectful and somewhat patient, but they are best known for their get done attitudes. That kind of attitude requires them to be a bit more tough in their production driven personalities. The best leaders usually have the most strength in their overall personalities. They come to the table of work with a mission in mind. It is obvious, driven and strong. They scare most of the other soft leaders who spend a good deal of time standing around. They come to the table with a bit of a push in their attitude to success. They tend to carry some rough edges.
We live in a soft world. A lot of people in positions of leadership have a tendency to avoid surrounding themselves with strong leaders who prefer to produce better results. Our soft world prefers a smoother process. Driven leaders do not easily fit well in these kinds of environments. Most business models are made up of soft leaders. Most business models are often driven by leaders who do not desire to be pushed, challenged or pressured by other strong leaders. They prefer to remain calmer about getting enough done to remain fair in their path to perform. Fair results will suffice for now. That is how most business models do what they do. Most of the soft leaders in our current world remain without change. Even when it is pressing and needed. A change is not welcomed. It does not look like comfort.
We live in a soft world. Hard forging leaders are not viewed as the right kinds of characters to have aboard your comfortable ship. They push too hard, work to diligently and may threaten the current leaders sense of control. Hard pressing leaders may easily disturb the world of protected change. This is exactly how many business models resort to and remain forever satisfied with average production. We are soft. We reward soft followers.
We prefer easy leaders who work harder on compliance than they do on reaching out and trying new innovations and serving consumers better. We are a soft world. We prefer style over function. Look at how we elect presidents! Style will always cover up performance. This makes our supply of great leaders rather limited. Driven leaders are rare. Driven leaders are more politically correct but it is harder to detect. They are too busy performing well rather than spending large chunks of their time looking well. Driven leaders are more blunt in how they arrive at the scene of high production. Their motives are right but their transparency for coming to the work with such a great focus can easily serve up the wrong kind of attention. It is a soft world.
Our current soft world needs to satisfy the superiors first(to get in the door), the constituents second(to rally support) and the production third( the quality of the work applied). This is usually the normal pattern of production that our soft world of business has come to protect. The consumers come well behind the superiors desires and the rules and procedures they set in place. This is how soft leaders perform what they are asked to perform. Just as long as they comply with the rules of the boss, who cares about any disservice the consumer may need to experience. The boss wants these few things done and that is that. Rub up against this law and discover where you stand. Not a good place. That is one of the key reasons why we live in a soft world. We need to please the boss first. There are very few driven leaders who have the courage to forge ahead and deliver the solutions first. Those kinds of leaders are viewed at the round table as threats.
Once the favor of supporting the boss becomes accomplished, the next step is to sell this package to the constituents...the buyer. The second part of a soft world is to try to figure out which spin will work the best. Transparency is not usually the method of choice. Cover ups work better for this task. A lot of the things that drive our leaders today are things that are not necessarily high on the consumer driven level. Those things will need some style added to their story to help the consumers accept the non-consumer driven ways of delivery. A good spin helps. The business world has come to this kind of performance pattern more than it does not. We live in a soft world. Strong transparent leaders are not welcomed in this kind of business environment. Our world of leadership is too soft for this kind of challenge.
What's more, driven leaders are usually avoided and not selected to become part of the team. They rub up against our deepest desires to remain calm and comfortable. Driven leaders are always working to stir up success. Driven leaders are very busy shaking success out of every tree in the forest where they are temporarily lost. That kind of stuff produces a certain level of stress to those who prefer to move with less production. It certainly produces added stress to those who prefer leading for the attention leadership provides. Production will always take a backseat to attention. Production carries less style. It is one of the by-products of a softer society in the business and political world.
Driven leaders are rare because they find little support. As a result, they may eventually modify their driven ways to become more compliant to be able to become better received. This feeds the pattern of producing a softer world. Driven leaders are rare. Phil Knight is a rare gem. Nike is a rare company. But that leader is a very driven man. He makes no bones about how to get done what needs to be done. There is not much to softness when his mission becomes located in the cross-hairs of his vision. The Phil Knights of this world are rare breeds. Most of the world is filled with softer leaders.
How do you become one of those rare leaders?
How does a business leader find support for the driven ways they prefer to deliver? Production. Produce well, often and with great success. That is how driven leaders will gain healthy support. It will come from their consumers. Their consumers will respond more often than their support group, their superiors and their peers. High consumer support is the only way a driven business leader will be able to remain well away from the soft world of stylistic leaders. It is in the consumer vote that will produce the production results of the driven leader. Recognize this truth. Production is key.
How do you become one of those rare leaders?
Make sure you want to become one of those rare leaders. It is a lonely world. To head for the place where you will find very few standing, it can get very lonely. Make sure you completely understand this truth. Strong leaders spend most of their time all alone. They are too busy working on the many things that need to be getting done. They are forging ahead to solve the millions of problems that are waiting for their solutions. They are working it constantly. Those that work this way soon discover very few allies live in this fashion. The world is usually much softer. It does not become surrounded by very many driven leaders. Most leaders go to work each day to do a little bit more of what they were doing yesterday. Driven leaders refuse to operate in this fashion. Instead, they go to work to solve more new problems. That kind of approach to work makes them rare and alone. Make sure you are fine with this process before you decide to become a driven leader.
It is a soft world. Driven leaders are rare. That does not mean it is a wrong world, however. Just recognize how soft the world is when decisions must be made. If you are a driven leader and your production is not up to par, go about your business more slowly. Work on being more thorough. Become more sensitive and reveal your transparency more carefully. It is a soft world. They do not like hard driving leaders. Driven leaders pose too many threats to those who are softly in charge. This reality is not an exception, it is the rule. As a business leader who desires to produce higher success, recognize this rule. It is a soft world.
Until next time...
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