{"id":2108,"date":"2009-09-17T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/09\/the-leadership-paradox\/"},"modified":"2009-09-17T09:37:32","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T14:37:32","slug":"the-leadership-paradox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/09\/the-leadership-paradox\/","title":{"rendered":"The Leadership Paradox"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Good leaders must be good followers.\u00a0 That is paradoxical, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/05\/31\/magazines\/fortune\/marines_greatteams_fortune\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">This article from CNNMoney.com<\/a> chronicles an M.B.A. students journeys from grad school to the Marines to a tour of duty in Iraq and back to grad school.\u00a0 It is a fascinating first-hand account (h\/t to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.justsell.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">JustSell.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>This is profound (emphasis mine):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In many ways there&#8217;s probably no better preparation I could have had for the business world than joining the Marine Corps. <strong>The Marines teach you how to be both a leader and a follower.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t have to lead in every situation &#8211; but I&#8217;ve come to enjoy stepping up in a time of chaos. When I&#8217;m working with a group now, I can honestly say that I think about the team first. The &#8220;I first&#8221; approach has been drilled out of me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Therein lies a common problem I encounter with business leaders \u2013 they are not good followers.\u00a0 Leadership has a way of removing empathy over time.\u00a0 Some leaders forget what they personally experienced when they were in follower positions.\u00a0 Other leaders develop what I refer to as \u201cgod complexes\u201d where they believe they are all-knowing.\u00a0 Usually they are not, but you can\u2019t illustrate that point to them.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, I know of one business owner who is a subject-matter expert in his field.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that field is not a business field.\u00a0 However, he believes his subject-matter expertise transcends the subject into business management.\u00a0 His employees, some of whom do have business expertise, attempt to contribute to him in these areas.\u00a0 He will not receive the input.\u00a0 Instead he forges on making independent decisions that have cost the business dearly.<\/p>\n<p>If you read the entire article you will see a unique process, employed by the Marines, to teach team-building amongst leaders.\u00a0 The best sales leaders I have encountered are the ones who know how to empower their employees, direct through difficult situations and make the tough decisions at critical junctures.<\/p>\n<p>That last sentence sounds trite, but it is true.\u00a0 The gist of it is the opening sentence of this post \u2013 good leaders must be good followers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good leaders must be good followers.\u00a0 That is paradoxical, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 This article from CNNMoney.com chronicles an M.B.A. students journeys from grad school to the Marines to a tour of duty in Iraq and back to grad school.\u00a0 It is a fascinating first-hand account (h\/t to JustSell.com). This is profound (emphasis mine): In many ways there&#8217;s probably no better preparation I could have had for the business world than joining the Marine Corps. The Marines teach you how to be both a leader and a follower. I don&#8217;t have to lead in every situation &#8211; but I&#8217;ve come to enjoy stepping up in a time of chaos. When I&#8217;m working&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2009\/09\/the-leadership-paradox\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31,4,11],"tags":[1397,31,1395,1363,1396],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-y0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2109,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions\/2109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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