Leading in crisis requires drawing upon just about every leadership skill.

Natural or human-made: disasters have the potential to cripple businesses.

The leaders who are most effective in crisis are the ones who make sure everyone is prepared, even when there is no crisis on the horizon. Some preparation is administrative, like ensuring that you have adequate insurance coverage. But other types of crisis preparation are less straightforward. After all, the nature of a crisis is that it’s unpredictable.

The greatest leaders prepare for a crisis to the best of their ability, and they help their teams prepare for crises as well. It’s not easy, and it’s not convenient. But should the worst happen, you and your teams will be grateful for having gone through preparatory steps.

You Must Consider the Worst-Case Scenario

Whether it’s a hurricane, blizzard, or major cybersecurity incident, you must plan for the worst, and you can’t take for granted that disasters will be balanced out by periods of crisis-free time. The Roman emperor Titus only reigned for two years, but during that time Mt. Vesuvius erupted, a large part of Rome burned, and there was an outbreak of plague. Don’t assume that crises will be rare or spread out.

In other words, if your business is in a state that has a history of being hit by hurricanes, plan as if you’ll get multiple direct hits from Category 5 storms. This will prevent everyone from being placed into “reaction mode” during a crisis, causing them to make mistakes that worsen the situation. As much as possible, you want your response to a crisis to be a procedure rather than a series of reactions.

Education, Training, and Practice

You must educate leadership about crisis preparation. In fact, I believe that leadership development programs should spend time on the type of leadership required during crises, including crisis preparation. Every employee should receive training on what they can expect in the event of a disaster and the resources that may be made available to them (such as alternate forms of transportation).

And yes, you should practice crisis response. It will never be convenient to do this, but there is no substitute for practice. Coordinated, supervised activities help you gain familiarity with your response plan, identify flaws in it, and help you correct them. Furthermore, if a disaster plan requires the use of special equipment, you have the opportunity to make sure it works as expected. For example, the mock “snow day” where personnel must work remotely by logging into the company network gives everyone the chance to see how it plays out and address problems in a “safe” scenario.

Practicing for a crisis will never be convenient, but it is the best way to measure your level of readiness.

Additional Tips for Coping During a Crisis

• Redundant systems and redundant skills are necessary for adequate crisis management. More than one person should be trained for every crisis response role.
• Appoint a spokesperson well before disaster strikes. Having an official “face” of the company to handle media will prevent distractions and help your company deliver a unified message.
• Avoid the temptation to use a major crisis as a platform for self-promotion. Not only does grandstanding distract from the important tasks at hand, but it’s also simply unprofessional.
• Always conduct a postmortem after a crisis has been addressed. Ask your crisis team what they learned from the incident and what unexpected problems arose. This helps you be better prepared next time.

Nobody wants to be the leader who was caught unprepared when disaster strikes. At the same time, crisis preparedness can be dull and tedious, yet it is just as necessary as managing your finances and your employees. Practicing your plans by holding mock disasters can throw a wrench into ordinary operations, but it can make the difference between successfully handling a crisis and being completely overwhelmed by it.

Executive leadership isn’t always about ensuring maximum productivity and meeting milestones. Sometimes it is about preparing for problems that are difficult to anticipate and that pose serious threats. It takes an outstanding leader to seriously address crisis preparation and response and to risk the groans from teams when you carry out a disaster drill.

But it only takes one disaster to show the immeasurable value of executive leadership that is fully prepared. If you’re interested in learning more about leadership, I invite you to check out my books. I also hope you will be on the lookout for my latest book, The Intelligent Leader, available today October 15.

Talent is a good and wonderful thing. But talent means little unless it is put to use.

Great leaders, like great artists, are known by the fruits of their labor.

The people who make a real difference are the ones who are willing to act, even under pressure. In fact, someone who makes a real difference may or may not have the most talent associated with their action. But they show up, suit up, and do the work, and that’s better than outstanding talent that just stands around.

Action isn’t easy. In what can often be a high-stakes world of business, taking action requires courage, and courage is something that takes time to develop and that takes practice to develop fully. But committing to using talent by acting courageously is a hallmark of a great leader.

In my new book The Intelligent Leader, I discuss shifting from strategy to action in Chapter 6, “Having the Courage to Execute with Pride, Passion, and Precision.” Courageous action is defined by earned pride in what you do, tapping into passion, and using focus to act with precision.

Taking Rightful Pride in What You Do

Some artists are so great that you can recognize their work instantly. An Eames chair or a Zaha Hadid building is instantly recognizable even without someone mentioning their names. Great accomplishments are the result of people who take pride in their work by being absolutely obligated to quality and holding themselves to the highest standards.

There’s another type of pride too, of course. Arrogant pride tends to be unearned and based on the desire for recognition, and it ultimately alienates people and gets in the way of real success. Earned pride, however, can’t be faked, and it comes from taking courageous action and having a standard of excellence.

Passion: Being in “The Zone” and Overcoming Obstacles

Focusing and becoming absorbed in your work motivates you to overcome obstacles.

Do you sometimes become so absorbed in what you’re doing that you completely lose track of time and of the outside world? That comes from passion. Passion is a key driver of all great human endeavors, and it is an element of outstanding leadership.

Passion in your work not only helps you get into “The Zone” where you are completely absorbed and lose track of time, but it also helps you to overcome obstacles. Passion has no choice but to stand up to resistance, and you tap into your passion by knowing and understanding your core purpose. Passion – and the actions that come from it – connect you to your reason for being. Understand your core purpose and you can bring more passion to your work as a leader.

Precision: “Chop Wood, Carry Water”

There is a Zen saying that goes, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” We sometimes become enraptured with the end results of our actions to the point where we neglect the actual hard work that gets us there. We have to give our best efforts to simple tasks in order to conquer the big tasks and to do that we must focus on the present.

By being in the present moment and focusing on acting with precision, we make fewer mistakes and leave less to chance. We’re not just going through the motions but bringing awareness to every step. And what about after we’ve accomplished something big? We still “chop wood and carry water.” Because our actions deserve our attention and commitment, and great leaders know that.

Making the shift from perspective to action is just one of the dimensions of leadership I explore in-depth in The Intelligent Leader. All dimensions of leadership deserve exploration and attention because each and everyone is necessary for great leadership. The Intelligent Leader comes out on October 15, and I hope you’ll check it out. Whether or not you have a “leadership” job title, developing your inner leadership qualities and outer leadership capabilities will serve you well in life and help make the world better.

Not all leadership transitions are planned. Sometimes circumstances conspire to put a person in a leadership role before they have had time to prepare.

Sometimes people are thrust into leadership roles and must adapt quickly.

This can be overwhelming for even highly qualified individuals who expected to eventually take leadership roles. Growing into a new leadership role takes time and effort, but there are steps anyone can take to help the process move forward. Here are six ways you can help yourself grow into a new leadership role.

1. Identify and Articulate Your “Why”

Identifying what motivates you in your new role is essential. What is the underlying reason behind your drive to excel? Once you know this, you will have a greater ability to face and overcome the obstacles that every leader must face. There may be days when you have to repeatedly remind yourself of your “why,” but doing so can give you the extra courage you need to push forward when you face challenges.

2. Think Beyond the Tactical to the Strategic

There is value in identifying and attending to immediate needs – the tasks that are at hand and apparent. But you should allow strategy to guide your decisions as well. As a leader, you are asked to take a bigger picture view than you were before. That means you must allow what will benefit the team and the company to guide your decisions and priorities.

3. Ask for, listen to, and Act on Feedback

It’s not easy to ask for feedback, but it is the most direct way to get from where you are to where you want to be. Feedback may come from people with more experience who are in senior positions to you, or it may come from colleagues or even from team members you now lead. Feedback helps you learn what your strengths are and where there are opportunities for improvement.

4. Invest in Personal Development

You may be a leader now, but you’re still a multidimensional human. Don’t forget what makes you “you”.

Leaders are human, and humans have multiple dimensions. Don’t neglect yourself as a person. Yes, your leadership role may require that you take classes or learn specific skills, but as a well-rounded, well-informed human, you must invest in yourself. Read great books. Practice the instrument you play. Give your community basketball team your best efforts. You’ll feel better about yourself and be better prepared to succeed as a leader.

5. Accept and Understand Your Flaws

Can you think of someone who appears to have no flaws? They do. And if they have gone anywhere in life worth going, they have had to accept and work on them. Knowing your flaws allows you to work on them and has the paradoxical effect of making it harder for others to use them against you. Being honest with yourself is a crucial ingredient in self-awareness, and self-awareness is a trait of every outstanding leader.

6. Don’t Settle for “Good Enough”

When you’re a leader, mediocrity isn’t good enough. What may have been acceptable as a front-line employee isn’t good enough for a leader. This does not mean you have to do things for which you’re not trained or take on tasks for which you are unqualified. It does mean, however, that everything you do, you must commit to giving it the time and attention it deserves. By not settling for “good enough,” you set an example for yourself and for your team members.

If you have access to leadership development programs, you should take advantage. Leadership development programs are designed to help current and future leaders elevate their skills and think strategically. And if you are offered leadership coaching, you can be confident that your organization has immense confidence in your ability to be an outstanding leader.

Leadership coaching isn’t designed to teach you how to lead, but to help you understand yourself (flaws, best characteristics, and all) and make the most of your gifts and talents, for the betterment of yourself and your organization. If you want to explore leadership further, I invite you to check out my books. And I also hope you will be on the lookout for my latest book, The Intelligent Leader, which comes out on October 15.

Remember being in school and completing an exam for which you studied and prepared? Putting your pencil down and turning in your exam paper felt good, like you had met a milestone.

It’s not always easy to know when something is complete and done.

On the other hand, you may have experienced exams where time ran out before you could finish everything. You had to turn in your exam, and it probably felt terrible to know you weren’t finished.

Knowing what “done” looks and feels like is important. In fact, you should consider it a skill worthy of any leadership development program. The definition must be specific to the task, of course. The definition of “done” for a software bug fix is different from the definition for a quarterly report or publication of a blog post, for example. But being able to define “done” will help you lead better and will help your teams be more productive too.

What Happens When You Don’t Define “Done?”

When you and your team don’t have a definition of what “done” looks like, everyone will naturally apply their own assumptions to the definition. One person may consider the quarterly report to be done when it has been drafted and submitted for approval. Another may consider it done when approval is granted. Still, another team member may consider it done only when it’s been revised two or three times, submitted for approval, and archived.

This can lead to misunderstandings and potential conflicts. It can also increase the likelihood of the project or deliverable needing revision and rework. In other words, when everyone has their own idea of what it means to be done, wasted time is often a byproduct.

It’s a Definition That Requires Specifics

A definition of “done” must be specific. It shouldn’t include vague past-tense verbs like “completed” or “finished.” Rather, it should have specific verbs, such as “approved,” “delivered,” “deployed,” or “archived.”

The more specific the action words you use when defining the completion of an activity, the less room there is for confusion. Team members are more likely to stay on the same metaphorical page because the actions can only be interpreted in specific ways.

Ask Yourself This Question

If you disappeared after handing over a deliverable, would the recipient be able to take it and run with it without needing you?

Here’s one way to know when you are done with a project. Ask yourself, “If I declared this project over right this minute and had the team move onto their next project, would everything be OK?” In other words, if you handed in your deliverable and moved on to the next thing, would the recipient need anything further from you?

Naturally, there will sometimes be occasions when the recipient does need something further from you, but when you’re really “done” with your project or deliverable, that “something further” will typically be small and easily taken care of.

Benefits of Everyone Knowing What “Done” Looks Like

When you have defined “done” clearly for your team, everyone is more aligned toward the same goal. While people may have different personal definitions for “finished,” it’s much harder to misinterpret “delivered to Doris, with three copies for department heads and a fourth for archival.” With less room for misunderstanding, everyone is actually freer to do their best work, because they all know precisely what it is that they are working toward.

As a leader, your name will be associated with the projects you lead, and you want to be certain that those projects are ones you can take pride in. Defining upfront what “done” looks like for all phases of a project as well as for the project overall gives your team something more solid to bite into. It allows you to lead by using your leadership talents of communication and delegation and helps prevent slipping into unproductive practices like micromanaging.

Sometimes my leadership coaching clients have to understand that their teams can’t read their minds and that their teams don’t always see projects and completion in the same terms that they do. Working with leadership clients on communication can help tremendously with this. Helping them visualize, articulate, and define what “done” looks like helps them lead better and helps their teams perform better.

If you are interested in leadership development, I encourage you to check out my latest book, The Intelligent Leader, which will be available on October 15.

Physical maps almost seem quaint in a world where a voice on Google Maps can dictate your every turn.

The map of your own strengths and gaps helps you plot your course toward Intelligent Leadership.

But one of the most important “maps” you can have is metaphorical, and the ultimate voice that guides your path is your own. This is the map of yourself – where you are now, and where you want to end up in life. And you can’t create such a map unless you know where you are starting from. This requires that you identify and understand your strengths and weaknesses. It’s simple, but not necessarily easy.

Maybe you’re already a leader, or maybe you want to be. Maybe you’re about to pursue a leadership development course. No matter. Creating a “map” of yourself opens up a new dimension of leadership. I talk about this in Chapter 5 of my upcoming book The Intelligent Leader. Here are some thoughts on assessing your strengths and weaknesses.

Assess Your Strengths with an Abundance Mindset

When I work with leaders in a coaching capacity, we spend a lot of time identifying strengths and weaknesses using several assessment tools. In my experience, people are more interested in their weaknesses because they want to know what they need to work on. But this is like putting the cart before the horse. Knowing your strengths and knowing what you do well offers you the tremendous opportunity to learn how to make the most of them.

What are your five biggest strengths as a human and a leader? What do you believe that others admire most in you? Be honest. You will have time to work on your weaknesses. In fact, people often do make time to work on their weaknesses, but they may neglect to work on their strengths. Identify your strengths and view them as the gifts that they are. Commit to making the most of them.

Identify Your Gaps Objectively

There are assessment tools that are great at helping people identify aspects of themselves where there is room for improvement, and I use them with my coaching clients. But most of us know deep down what some of our weaknesses are. And most of us have several people in our lives who we can ask for feedback. Honest feedback about where we could improve isn’t easy to ask for, and it isn’t always easy to give, either. But this feedback is remarkably valuable.

People willing to give you compassionate, constructive feedback are real gifts in life.

Most of us know some of our weaknesses, but we may have opportunities for improvement that we never even thought of. Honest colleagues and friends, as well as assessment tools, can help us identify where we fall short. Knowing our weaknesses helps us identify not only where we want to go, but the first steps toward getting there.

The Importance of Building on Your Strengths

Some people think that leadership coaching is all about identifying weaknesses or performance gaps and making a plan to address them. But that’s only part of what leadership coaching and leadership development are about. Helping people build on their strengths and put their strengths to work in ways that they may never have considered is one of the most rewarding aspects of the coaching relationship.

Think about it. Roger Federer may have the greatest forehand in the sport of tennis, but do you think he takes it for granted? Absolutely not. Maximizing your strengths and knowing where they apply is one of the most important things you can do as a professional and as a human being. Celebrate your strengths. Continue to work on them. Learn where they can serve you as a leader.

Overcoming Your Weaknesses: Don’t Tackle Everything at Once

Looking at the map of yourself and seeing the distance you may have to go before you overcome a major gap or flaw can be discouraging. The route may appear long and winding, and you may encounter unexpected detours along the way. It’s important that you don’t try to “fix” everything at once. Your flaws may limit your growth and progress, but you don’t need to overcome them 100% before you can see and feel a real, positive difference in your performance. Every one of us is a work in progress, so pay attention to the progress.

My latest book The Intelligent Leader comes out on October 15. In it, I go into significant depth on the topics of strengths and weaknesses in leadership. I hope that you will check it out! In the meantime, I invite you to check out my other books.

Courage comes from the heart. The word itself derives from the Old French term “corage,” which refers to a person’s “heart, innermost feelings; temper.”

Courage can’t be topically applied. It must originate from within.

While there are mental exercises one can do to help build courage, ultimately, it must be drawn out from within. Some people think of courage as a lack of fear, but it isn’t. Courage is about accepting fear and the vulnerability that goes along with it, yet acting based on one’s beliefs, even in challenging or frightening situations.

It’s not always easy to recognize courage in leadership, particularly during mundane or unchallenging times. Courage tends to become apparent when times are tougher. Lack of courage in leadership, however, is easier to recognize, in good times and in bad.

What Lack of Courage in Leadership Looks Like

Leaders who lack courage avoid difficult conversations. Teams led by non-courageous leaders tend to be fearful and unsure of what decisions to make. It can be difficult to solve problems when working with uncourageous leadership. Teams led without courage are often less inclusive and more prone to be cliquish, because people tend to take on a “circle the wagons” mentality. And mistakes are often “handled” through blame and shame rather than in constructive ways.

In short, leadership without courage produces teams without courage or direction. It’s bad for business, and it’s bad for the corporate culture.

Questions to Ask and Actions to Take to Build Your Courage

When we come to those crossroads that require courage to traverse, we can draw on our courage by asking ourselves key questions, like:

• Why am I so afraid to make the wrong decision?
• Have I honestly considered the risks I face and how to mitigate them?
• What is the worst that could happen if things go wrong?
• What is the best that could happen if things go right?
• Will I regret not moving forward with courage?
• How will other people be affected by my decisions and actions?

In general, building courage on a daily basis requires a few key practices and attitudes:

• Don’t run away from conflict.
• Accept failure and learn from it.
• Be accountable.
• Set high standards for yourself and those you lead.
• Be decisive.
• Learn to trust and to delegate where appropriate.

Courage doesn’t shy away from the difficult conversations but digs into this fertile ground for growth.

Consequences of Courageous Leadership

The consequences of courageous leadership are positive and extend well beyond oneself. Leaders who consistently act with courage benefit themselves and their teams in these crucial ways:

• They build influence through trust rather than fear or intimidation.
• They build their own and others’ accountability.
• They improve their own and others’ ability to handle conflict.
• They strengthen their moral core.
• They lay a strong foundation for collaboration and teamwork.
• They build capacity for evaluating and taking risks.
• They vastly improve the workplace culture.

Leadership development programs don’t always spend time discussing and helping people understand what courage is and what it isn’t. But intelligent leadership always understands courage and its role in meeting and exceeding goals.

The road to success is never straight and smoothly paved. It encounters corners, potholes, the “traffic” of day-to-day challenges, and sometimes long stretches of darkness where faith is the only thing that keeps you moving forward. The intelligent leader knows that it is courage that delivers the wherewithal to round those corners, choreograph around the potholes, and follow that narrow beam of light when things are dark, and the path is not obvious.

My approach to leadership development starts from within. Because my experience – both personally and as a leadership coach – tells me that it is what’s deep inside a person’s inner core that informs how leadership can best grow and develop. Examining our innermost beliefs, convictions, and fears isn’t easy, but it’s necessary in order to become the kind of intelligent leaders that this world so desperately needs. Examining our inner core is an excellent place to start when it comes to using the courage we have and developing the courage we need.

If you’re interested in learning more about leadership development, I invite you to check out my books. And I hope you will be on the lookout for my latest book, The Intelligent Leader, which comes out in October.

Every week, it seems like, a respected leader is caught behaving unethically or illegally, and within seconds the news is broadcast around the globe.

The news is full of leaders who refuse to make leadership a way of life.

There may have been a time when a leader could get away with dictating the actions of employees, all while engaging in bad behavior like cheating on their spouse or mishandling company money. Those days are over. The “genie” of information is far too big to be stuffed back into the “bottle” of kept secrets.

Today more than ever, leadership must be a way of life and not just a job title. And it’s not just because the risk of being caught behaving badly is greater. Leaders who practice integrity and build relationships on trust simply lead better. Compartmentalizing and juggling multiple versions of life may be exciting for a while, but ultimately, it’s exhausting and when things inevitably fail, it hurts both people and business.

“Servant Leadership” and its Consequences

You have probably encountered the term “servant leadership,” which is a form of leadership that puts service before leadership. This approach to leadership makes sense both professionally and personally.

On a personal level, the leader who is genuinely committed to service is less likely to ignore the people and institutions of their non-work life, because they’re better equipped for recognizing others’ needs and fulfilling their responsibilities related to those needs.

Professionally, servant leadership is good business. James Sipe and Don Frick found that over a 10-year period, stock returns from the S&P 500 were 10.8%. But the stocks of servant-led companies got average returns of 24.2%! Moreover, researchers at the University of Illinois found that servant leadership resulted in a 50% increase in employee retention.

Don’t Use Your Title of “Leader” as an Excuse

Using responsibilities as an excuse to neglect other areas of life eventually backfires.

Too many leaders (and non-leaders) are skilled at using one area of their life to make excuses for other areas. In other words, a leader may claim that they’re simply too busy and in-demand to eat healthy, make it to their child’s basketball game, or quit smoking.

Leadership as a way of life demands that you recognize your truest values and priorities. That requires that you either step up and do what you claim is important or stop saying that it’s important. Walking the talk may mean committing to major personal or professional changes, and that can be a hard pill to swallow. But the results include becoming a better leader and a better overall human being.

Courage Applies to All Areas of Life

Courage isn’t just something you use at work, in your capacity as a leader. When you make courage a way of life for your entire life and not just your work life, good things happen. For one thing, you use your courage more, and that strengthens it, just like exercising strengthens muscles.

For another, being courageous enough to accept and deal with problems in all areas of life can prevent those problems from spilling over and affecting other aspects of life. Deal constructively with the misbehaving child at home and you’re less likely to be interrupted at work by a phone call from the principal’s office, for example.

In Work and Life, Stay Open to New Ideas 

Outstanding leaders know that they never “arrive” at a final leadership destination. They remain willing and eager to embrace new ideas and learn new things. They know that looking back at the past or refusing to move forward is paralyzing. Remember the story in Genesis about Lot’s wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt? When we look back and refuse to move forward, we too become “pickled” as if in salt. Our businesses and our lives demand that we remain open to change and new ideas, and no job title can force that to happen.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what your job title is when it comes to leadership. Real leaders – formally named or not – know that leadership is a way of life and act accordingly. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into the subject of leadership, I invite you to check out my books. Also, be on the lookout for my new book, The Intelligent Leader, which comes out in October.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines empowerment as the process of gaining freedom and power to control what happens to you.

Empowerment and duty accomplish more than entitlement ever can

It defines entitlement as a feeling that you have the right to do or have what you want, simply because of who you are. Leadership development is (or should be) about empowerment rather than entitlement, because empowerment has substance, while entitlement is ultimately hollow – no matter how emphatically the entitled person tries to convince people otherwise.

Unfortunately, a sense of entitlement is too common among leaders. I say “unfortunately” because entitlement shortchanges leadership and hinders the achievement of lasting success. Intelligent Leadership requires that each of us take a good hard look at ourselves and recognize signs of entitlement. Empowerment is a harder road to travel, but its benefits spread far. Entitlement is all about the self.

The Negative Consequences of the Entitlement Mindset

Short-term, the leader with entitled (or even narcissistic) tendencies may seem to get good results, especially when followers are uncertain or lack confidence. Entitlement can be great for uniting people around a common goal. Unfortunately, with an entitled leader, that common goal is typically glorification of the leader him- or herself.

Entitlement also tends to hinder productive collaboration. If followers are mostly there to prop up their leader’s ego, that doesn’t leave much time for productivity and progress. And while a strong sense of entitlement may unite a group of unconfident, unsure followers, followers who are confident tend to see straight through entitlement and set their sights on leaving for greener pastures.

The Positive Consequences of the Empowerment Mindset

Empowerment, on the other hand, is almost the opposite of entitlement. Empowerment is confident, but not selfish. A genuinely empowered leader wants followers to be empowered too, and that’s good for productivity and innovation.

Empowerment wants the best from and for others, not just oneself.

Empowerment is also practical in many ways. The empowered leader is typically both trusted and trusting and has no need to micromanage team members. When team members know their leader trusts their ability to get things done and get them done right, far less time is wasted. Team members develop confidence, and their good results reflect on themselves, the rest of the team, and their leader.

Developing a Mindset of Duty Rather Than Entitlement

Empowerment and duty are closely linked, whereas entitlement is divorced from the concept of duty. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having confidence in oneself. But sometimes even deservedly confident people can let entitlement creep in around the edges. And this tends to happen during times of adversity or challenge, which is precisely the wrong time for entitlement to rear its head.

In my newest book The Intelligent Leader, I lay out the seven dimensions of Intelligent Leadership. The third dimension, after “Thinking Big, Thinking Differently,” and “The Vulnerability Decision” is “Having a Mindset of Entitlement versus a Mindset of Duty.” Though I go into more detail in the book, cultivating the mindset of duty requires that a person:

• Take stock of successes, including the people who helped them get there
• Work on becoming both more trustworthy and more trusting
• Take genuine pride in others, giving them credit where it is due

No matter how much we accomplish, it’s essential that we regularly remind ourselves that, as Bernard of Chartres said in the 12^th century, “We are like dwarfs standing [or sitting] upon the shoulders of giants, and so able to see more and see farther than the ancients.”

The fact is, it is the hard work of earlier generations that laid the foundation for the prosperity we enjoy today. When leaders are out of touch with that foundation, they unwittingly inhibit their own and their teams’ ability to meet challenges and make real progress. “Good” leaders may be charismatic and magnetic, but the greatest leaders are the ones who dispense with entitlement and know the value of empowerment. They may forego glory right now, but ultimately, they’re the ones that history remembers.

If you’d like to learn more about Intelligent Leadership, I encourage you to check out my books. And I hope you’ll be watching for my latest book, The Intelligent Leader, which comes out in October.