Leadership Starts at Home

Ask my son to do something. Ask my son if he wants to do something. Ask my son if he will do something for you. I can fairly accurately guess, his answer will be, ‘No.’ Not because he is rude obstinate or being rebellious. His answer is no because he is two and that is what two year olds do.

On the other hand, if I tell my son what I am going to do and then start doing it, he will trip over himself to come join me. He will perform his fastest run-waddle possible to get over to me. He will help me, do it for me, do a part of it, or somehow be in the midst of the action of whatever I am doing.

As a parent, I get the opportunity to learn how to parent a toddler who wants to do what I am doing, not what I want him to do. Which means I am learning how to lead him.

I get to learn how to lead him and show him the right things to do. The simple mundane tasks of cleaning up the living room at the end of the night. or not throwing his fork across the dinner table. Then there are the complex tasks of voicing my emotions and helping him voice his emotions. When he is ramped up and he is losing his mind because he is upstairs and he wants to be downstairs.

At this stage, leading my son is more about modeling the right thing to do. Leading him is an invitation to do the right thing more than it is about telling him or asking him to do the right thing.

As you work with your team, friends, and family, how are you modeling the right things to do? How are they modeling for you the right thing to do? What do you do to invite them into the right thing to do? How do you respond when they invite you into the right thing to do?

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Rejecting A Cold

And just like that, Brendan Iribe, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, and Jan Koum. They all left. Facebook lost them to their own ambitions.

Who knows who will really come out on top. Truly, all four of them could colossally fail, be an absolute success, or most likely be some mix there in-between.

No matter what, Facebook is leaking founders.

They are leaking starters

They are leaking innovators

They are leaking leaders.

It is well above my pay grade to guess the nuanced reasons as to why they are leaving. But the reality of it is, they are leaving. Much like your body will reject a cold, flu, or stomach bug. These people are leaving. Again, I do not know why, but the body of Facebook could continue as it was and keep these people a part of Facebook and so they left.

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Similarly, when you are leading, when you are a part of a group, when you are doing the work that matters. Pay attention to the people around you. You will be attracting people like you and people unlike you will not stay around. When people do not resonate with you or engage with you, stop and assess what the difference was.

When someone does not stay around, stop and assess a few things in yourself, your group, and your organization/family:

What did I not resonate with them about? What is so different between us? What is so similar between us? What quality would they add to us? What can we add to them? How can we help them? How could they help us? What would I want them to add to the team? What should change about the team so someone like them can connect in the future?

These are a few ideas. You, your team, and your group is not for everyone but you should be intentional about who your group is trying to attract.

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However, Although

In my high school English class, we had to write a paper on the famous novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. Being the famously intelligent student I was during my senior year of high school, I did not finish the book. I paid attention to the conversations in class, I started reading the book. But truly did not care or finish the book.

We then were required to write our summary of the book and relate it to something, I cannot remember what I was supposed to relate the book to or even what I wrote about besides writing an eleven page paper when the requirement was five to seven pages.

The teacher that year required we turn in a rough draft of the paper for her to review as her way of assisting us in the paper writing process. So I did. I was up till 11:30, midnight, or later the night before pounding out the rough draft.

The following week we all met with the teacher one-on-one to discuss our drafts. When she and I met, I don’t remember anything else about my discussion with her besides one thing.

She laughed at me.

My teacher laughed at me for starting a paragraph, “However, Although?”.

My goal in doing so was to get her opinion of which word would better start the paragraph. Ultimately, I just picked a word and said nothing else to her the rest of the conversation.

Who do you have influence over? How careful are you with your influence? How much do you measure your words and actions with those you have influence over?

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Knowing Now and Later

You are a leader or a subordinated or both. As I am in my position now I have people I lead and people I follow. I see the people I lead and the people I follow. I need to be taking notes on both. I need to be writing down what I think the people I follow are doing well. 

I literally need to write down what I think people are doing well and what I would not want to repeat. These ideas will always be available to me as I continue to grow and mature in my life. I will always be able to look back and see what works and does not work and what I can do well. 

A journal full of leadership ideas will serve me well as I look to continue to grow and lead and mature. These ideas will also stick with me as I grow. I will not be able to step into a role where I make these same mistakes. I will not be able to forget what it was like following someone in my position. I will always be able to keep a perspective on who I am and how I came to be where I am. 

What is the perspective of someone who follows you? What do they see? What do they know? What is it like to follow you?

Journaling,

–JT