This is What Real Leaders Should Do

In his blog Steve Olson wrote a great post “Leaders Wanted – Please Apply Within” about leadership. He did not rant about the speech that he heard on the radio. He wrote his speech, the speech that he thinks the leader should deliver in the current economic situation.

First of all, as a leader, you should acknowledge mistakes. And you should not blame someone else. Don’t say that “the problem was created” or “wrong assumptions have been made” since these things did not just happen. We live in a real world and ghosts or aliens did not cause these problems. And by the way there are no ghosts or aliens (someone could probably argue that). Real people and their irresponsible actions caused these problems. That’s why it is much better say that “We created the problem”, “We made wrong assumptions”, etc. We and not somebody else will fix it.

Show that you are a leader. Show that you are not lost and don’t know what to do. Show that you have a plan of fixing the problem. Engage the best advisors that you can afford. Create a road map from the crisis.

Motivate your people. Encourage them. Because they believe you. Because they trust you. Because they support you. Tell them how great they are. Tell them that you believe in them. Tell them that you believe that they can make this happen.

Actually, you don’t have to be head of state or a CEO of a big multinational corporation to deliver such speech. In the same way you can speak to your development team that must meet a tough deadline or to football team that desperately want to make to playoffs.

And this is what real leaders should do: acknowledge, motivate, lead.