Being a good boss has a soft side and a hard side.
On the hard side, bosses provide training, instruction, guidance, goals and targets, resources, support, feedback, coaching and oversight. All this is good and necessary, even foundational.
Yet it is on the soft side that bosses can have their greatest impact. The best bosses help their people discover the untapped greatness within them. To quote Tom Peters, “Leaders do NOT transform their people, no one transforms anyone else”. Rather leaders create a context in which to “awaken the latent talent already within…by providing opportunities that justify their choosing to invest in us their most precious resources: their time and emotional commitment.”
The best bosses are compelling story tellers; the key is to motivate people to find the inspiring meaning in the mission, the deeper reason behind task, the underlying purpose in the goal.
Closing Quotes:
“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.” – Paul Hawken
“A good boss realizes they can learn from those they work with no matter the level, title or position. Learning is a continuous habit; one of the best lessons demonstrated by a good boss.” – Byron Pulsifer
“A good manager is a man who isn’t worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him.” – H. S. M. Burns
As an Owner/Operator of Real Estate with a “Digital Open Door”, I get “Questions For Chair” which I’d like to share:
What is your motivation and inspiration to be a better person each day? What steps do you take or follow? My dad was a very kind, altruistic person to whom stewardship and service were second nature. I grew up believing this to be the norm. Quite frankly, I don’t know any other way to be! That said, it is vital to continually renew and refresh our inspiration or things begin to wind down, i.e. entropy sets in. There are many wonderful sources of inspiration, find one or several and visit them regularly. To quote Zig Ziglar: “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”
For me it is two-fold:
1) Books: My reading chair in my office at home is circled by stacks of books of power, I often open one at random and begin reading until I find the nugget I need.
2) Positive People: I surround myself with folks who are doing things with their lives, living on purpose, who are solution oriented.
What is your biggest self-challenge that you are working on daily? Patience. Staying Cool, Calm, Collected, Centered. I can be moody and volatile; my mother was bi-polar to the extreme as was my brother. I can remember checking out for a week or more at a time in my younger days. CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, a fancy phrase for growing in self-awareness, learning your triggers and practicing self-discipline, has helped tremendously.
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier