I want to begin this final piece in our series on leadership by quoting a well-known and respected leader right here in the Czech Republic. “Leadership is a very serious responsibility. You are affecting people’s lives,” Tomas Sabatka.
This is exactly the sort of insight, integrity, self control and reflection that makes good leaders great.
Last week we discussed the importance of knowing yourself, getting out of your comfort zone and learning new skills, willingly accepting responsibility, and delivering more than is expected of you if you want to begin the process of becoming a leader. I want to once again emphasize the word process as it relates to becoming and to being a leader. Leadership is not a destination one reaches at a certain point in one’s career. To committed leaders who are dedicated to excellence it is a constant journey of learning and experience, of stretching one’s self and of relating to others.
How does one actually become a leader? Do you have to be lucky enough to be in the right gene pool? Can one learn how to be a leader?
What skills and abilities do you need to master in order to become a leader today in the Czech Republic and, as important, in a global economy? Why are certain skills and abilities important today? What are the moral aspects of good leadership? What advice do experts have for young professionals in the Czech Republic who want to grow professionally? These questions and more will be answered in this four-part series on leadership as it relates to the Czech Republic and the global economy.
Time is a great evaluator of people and their impact on things. Too often, especially in this age of instant, always-on information, after the test of time, we find that someone who was revered for something turns out to be much less impressive than we originally thought they were.
I was in the United States recently to attend my older son, Case’s, wedding. Being there, seeing friends and family whom I hadn’t seen for, in some cases, more than twenty years, and seeing my son, now a grown man, marry a wonderful young lady set the stage for some major reflection about life and its transitional events and the people with whom you experience those events.
At one time or another every young, ambitious professional dreams of becoming so sought after, so recognized for their ability, that they become indispensable—their contribution is so valuable that people, especially people in power with the ability to impact their future career path and their earning potential, find it difficult to imagine what things would be like without them. It’s not intelligence, connections, appearance, or talent that makes one indispensable. It’s a combination of common sense, observation skills, and some old-fashioned hard work. There’s no magic to it.
One of today’s foremost authorities on leadership is Warren Bennis, Founding Chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and author of 27 books and more than 2,000 articles on leadership. In his book, On Leadership, Dr. Bennis states that, after many years of observing and interviewing leaders, they differ from other people in very distinct and identifiable ways. First of all, they have a constant appetite for knowledge and experience—as their worlds widen and become more complex, so too do their means of understanding.
Many centuries ago, how one spoke was a matter of life or death. The word shibboleth comes from ancient Hebrew and this is how it came to be. Two of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Ephramites and the Gileadites, were having what we would today call a feud. It was virtually impossible to identify members of the different tribes by looking at them, especially if they wore clothing similar to the other tribe. But, one’s life might depend upon knowing who was approaching you in the desert.
This is one of my favorite times of the year because it is a natural break in all the activity of the previous 12 months. It is also a natural time for one of the most important things we can do as sentient beings—reflect.
