Leadership is a trait that all males should develop. Males are meant to be the head of the household, to lead families, as well as businesses, ventures, and nations. Without strong leadership things break down and fail. Though you may never lead a nation, no matter what you do, you’ll always be leading yourself. And the traits that make up a good leader are the same no matter the size.
Whether you are leader of a family or an army, there are similar traits that you will want to develop and nurture to do so effectively. But why? Why does leadership matter? Well let’s put it this way. Humans are essentially sheep in many ways. And not just “other” people but me, you, and all our friends and family as well. Even the smartest, strongest, and wisest among us are still sheep in many ways.
We are, after all, human. And human nature is to trend towards herd mentality and will always be susceptible to certain things. It requires leaders to guide and shape where humans go. To use the sheep analogy that’s to guide whether they go to green pastures filled with rich grass or off cliffs or to the dens of wolves. It is leaders that guide the herd and humanity is, if anything else, a herd.
So how does one acquire leadership skills and then use those skills to affect the world around them?
As With Everything Else, Start With Yourself
Do not worry about the speck in your brother’s eye until you have removed the plank in your own. Everything starts with you. Don’t worry about changing nations or even shaping your family effectively before first fixing your own issues and problems. Not that any of us will ever be perfect or anything like that. But self-leadership is required before you can ever hope to lead others.
You have to discipline yourself and get your life shaped roughly how you want before others will follow you. This means chipping away at bad habits while building good habits day in and day out. This means sticking with things and seeing things through to the end. This means not letting yourself off the hook but keeping yourself to the fire and the grind day in and day out.
And frankly, this is the hardest step, but it is also the first as well as the most critical. And again it’s not that you have to perfect before you lead others, otherwise you’d never be able to lead. Just that you have to first focus on yourself and removing that plank from your eye before worrying about the specks in others. Discipline yourself, do hard things, and work on yourself first.
The Only Way To Lead
People don’t notice or care what you say. So many people say so many different things but none of it matters. What people do notice and do care about is what you do. The only way to truly lead, and be effective at it, is to lead by example. Don’t tell people to get in shape when you’re out of shape. Don’t tell people to be strong when you’re weak. Don’t ask people to be honest when you lie. And so on and so forth. To put it in the simplest terms possible.
“Say what you mean and mean what you say.” but then most of all, go out and take the actions that back that up. While leading by example has less effect the higher you go, it’s still a key requirement to actually lead. What I mean by that is a head of nation doesn’t have to lead by example but most people won’t know them behind closed doors, they require sales skills more than anything else.
But for anywhere where you plan on sticking around for more than a few years you have to lead by example. And not just that but practice being a “servant leader”. Now what does that mean? Being a servant leader means leading from the bottom which is not as oxymoronic as it sounds.
A king leading the charge with his army, a shift manager mopping the floor and giving other tasks to others, a father joining a boxing gym because his son wants to box, and so on and so forth. Servant leadership means leading from the trenches, it means doing the dirty work and not shirking from it or letting it fall on others.
It means leading from the front, which we could consider just another way to lead by example.
There Is One More Key…
And we touched on it before. In addition to starting with yourself, leading by example, and being a servant leader there is another step to truly leading effectively. And that is “learning sales” or to be it more specifically learning human nature, how human’s function, and how to utilize that to lead effectively. It’s about understanding the nature of the carrot and the stick as well as when and how to apply each.
The more you can understand about human nature the more you’ll be able to “use”, “direct”, “convince” humans to do as you think best. This might sound manipulative, and it is, but that doesn’t make it “bad” in how we traditionally think of it. Giving your kid a pat on the head when he does good during a game is manipulation. Giving a grieving person a hug is manipulation. And so on and so forth.
Does that make it bad? No. Can it be used for bad? Sure, absolutely. Which is why character is so important in leaders, because of the power they have and the damage they can cause when they don’t have character. We can return to our analogy of the shepherd leading the sheep to the wolves den because the wolves bought him off.
But that’s another discussion entirely.
The Basics Of Effective Leadership
Here are the basics of effective leadership. Start with the self and work your way up and out from there. From self to family to neighborhood to community to district and so on and so forth. If that’s your desire. Though frankly I see little good with going past the community level with the way current things are. It’s about the only level you can get to without corrupting yourself in some way, shape, or form
But again it’s up to you. Utilize these tools how you will. For that is what they are, tools. If you want a “road map” if you will laid out for your life specifically then be sure to check out the coaching part of the site, I look forward to hearing from you.
Best Wishes,
-Charles Sledge
