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Pete's Mammoth Guide To Effective Leadership
by Captain Pete Brookshaw

Here is a mammoth guide to effective leadership. 100 Leadership Tips. Plenty of leadership quotes. Read at your own leisure. These are leadership axioms aimed at equipping you to lead more effectively. If you find them helpful, please share.

Leadership Tip 1 - Visionary leaders impart exciting, gripping visions. Leaders understand that without vision, people wander aimlessly.

Leadership Tip 2 - Visionary leaders inspire action and harness buy-in.

Leadership Tip 3 - Most people can see out to the horizon, but it takes a visionary leader to see beyond the horizon and then call people to follow that which they cannot see.

Leadership Tip 4 - Kouzes and Posner speak of the importance of inspiring a shared vision. Leaders, 'envision the future, creating an ideal and unique image of what the organization can become' (The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership Model)

Leadership Tip 5 - In the 2010 Global Leadership Summit, founder of the Summit, Bill Hybels offered four insights into leadership. One of them was that a leader moves people from HERE to THERE. Sounds simple, but the fact is, this is difficult. One may argue that communicating a compelling vision is not enough. A leader must create a sense of discontent with the current circumstances so as to have others even begin to consider moving to THERE.

Leadership Tip 6 - Continuing on with Bill Hybels insights into leadership, he suggests leaders need to identify fantastic people. He speaks about 'character, chemistry and competence' as foundational aspects for a leader. See, many projects, visions and dreams will rise or fall depending on the strength of the leader. This is not rocket science, but it's true. So find and retain fantastic leaders.

Leadership Tip 7 - Seek first to understand, then to be understood (Stephen Covey). Covey says we typically seek first to be understood. We need empathic listening skills to really harness this concept. Let me say it again; seek first to understand before you seek to be understood.

Leadership Tip 8 -Practice makes pretty perfect. Do you think famous basketballers just fell upon success? Do you think movie stars become great at their craft overnight? So, why then would you presume leadership skill and ability is a given? It is not. Grow as a leader and be intentional about it.

Leadership Tip 9 -Think outside the box to stay innovative. Innovative leaders are few and far between. Most leaders are too content with what is happening inside the box in front of them.

Leadership Tip 10 - Have good character. Good character is the foundation of good leadership. Albert Schweitzer (Nobel Peace Prize-winner) says, 'Example is leadership'. That is to say, leaders lead by example, through their character, their actions and their integrity. Who they are is what makes them a leader or not.

Leadership Tip 11 - Character precedes competence. You may be a great leader, but transformative leadership will crumble without understanding that character outweighs competence. When I say character I think of traits such as honesty, integrity, consistency and humility. Too many leaders have fallen because they slept with someone who was not their spouse, or embezzled money or showed nepotism. Competence without character will not last.

Leadership Tip 12 – Self-discipline is a requirement for every good leader. James R. Lowell says, 'No one can produce great things who is not thoroughly sincere in dealing with himself'. Leadership demands self-discipline. With urgent expectations, emails to answer, health to contend with and good character a necessity, self-discipline is a must.

Leadership Tip 13 – People follow what they see, not necessarily what you teach. If the actions of a leader do not line up with the words, people will dismiss the words. This is about authenticity in leadership and people can smell a hypocrite a mile away! Consider a child that you ask to, ‘Speak nicely of others.’ They will be more willing to proceed with the request, if you as a parent do the same thing. They will follow what they see, not necessarily what they hear. 

Leadership Tip 14 - Prioritize character development; that is, spend time working on developing your character. This is a leadership tip that cuts to the heart. Try to be nicer to your spouse, do the laundry without whingeing, be aware of how you speak and act to other employees. Developing character is not a given. You do not just turn up to work one day, and 'character' is in an envelope waiting to be pried open. Jack Hayford says, 'Our human disposition finds it easier to spend time "tweaking systems" than prioritizing honest-to-God introspection and constant availability to transformation'.

Leadership Tip 15 - 'Leadership is not about personality; it's about behavior; an observable set of skills and abilities' (Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner). #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 16 - You may not consider this, but one of the best leaders in the world is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Billions of followers today. He taught some radical ideas in relation to leadership. He spoke of serving more than status, he spoke of putting others first before yourself, and loving your enemies. Jesus exemplified leadership qualities. My leadership tip? Follow Jesus.

Leadership Tip 17 - Emotional resilience is of paramount importance in leadership. As the pressure increases from relational aspects of organisational life, a leader must be resilient in his/her emotions. A leader shouldn't 'crack under pressure' or 'flip out' when something doesn't go his/her way. You must find a way to be emotionally resilient.

Leadership Tip 18 - Nip it in the bud. Yes, that's right. When a people issue arises, do something about it. Cool it down before it flares up. Leaders take initiative in this respect.

Leadership Tip 19 - Ideas are only ideas until they are acted upon. Don't just be an ideas man. That's not leadership. Be an implementer.

Leadership Tip 20 - Good leaders 'model the way'. This is one of five practices of exemplary leadership as noted by Kouzes and Posner. Modelling the way is about creating standards of excellence; it is about setting the bar high and showing people through observable actions, how to reach the bar.

Leadership Tip 21 - Modelling the way may look like this: Show someone a task as they watch, then help them do the task, then let them do the task as you watch, and then finally, let them do the task themselves. Leadership is about modelling the way.

Leadership Tip 22 - I once spoke to someone about 'not having enough time'. Well, the response was the classic leadership response (and it's true), that everyone has 24 hours in the day. It's not about how much time you have, but how you prioritize your time that is important. That's priority management.

Leadership Tip 23 - Stephen Covey highlights the priority matrix in his classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He speaks of four quadrants:

Quadrant 1: URGENT tasks and VERY IMPORTANT tasks

Quadrant 2: Not URGENT tasks but VERY IMPORTANT tasks

Quadrant 3: URGENT tasks but not VERY IMPORTANT tasks

Quadrant 4: Not URGENT tasks and not VERY IMPORTANT tasks

Leaders will often spend time in quadrant one and quadrant three. It is the tyranny of the urgent. You have opportunities to delegate quadrant three tasks (urgent but not important tasks), e.g. responding to some emails, posting letters, etc. Great leaders will learn to spend time in quadrant two (not URGENT but VERY IMPORTANT tasks), as this is where visionary leadership comes from. These are the moments you step back and spend time developing leaders and investing in the lives of others. Quadrant two is about growing your own capacity. Stephen Covey would suggest to not get caught up in just quadrant one and three. And let it go without saying, that quadrant four is for lazy leaders, who sit around and play Candy Crush and Minesweeper while the day passes them by.

Leadership Tip 24 - How do you define leadership? Kevin Kruse at Forbes.com defines leadership as, 'a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal.'

Leadership Tip 25 - Leaders need to have power. Let me qualify this by defining power. 'Power refers to the means leaders have to potentially influence others' (Day & Antonakis). Now there are different types of power, including coercive power, expert power, power that comes from example, etc. Power need not be negative, nor domineering, and status-seeking, but rather denotes the connection between a leader and a follower. How that power is expressed within leadership will speak clearly of the character of the leader. French and Raven suggest that there are 5 sources of power.

Leadership Tip 26 - Great leaders 'challenge the process'. Kouzes and Posner highlight one of the five practices of exemplary leadership as having the capacity in leadership to try and fail. Leadership pushes against the status-quo. Leadership breaks old paradigms and pursues new ways of thinking and new ways of acting.

Leadership Tip 27- 'Leaders have a significant role in creating the state of mind that is the society. They can serve as symbols of the moral unity of the society. They can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in the pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.' (J. W. Gardner, 1965. #leadership quote)

Leadership Tip 28 - House and Shamir (1993) in their article Toward the integration of transformational, charismatic, and visionary theories, highlight seven important aspects of leadership: 1) visionary behaviour, 2) positive self-presentation, 3) empowering behaviours, 4) calculated risk-taking and self-sacrificial behaviour, 5) intellectual stimulation, 6) supportive leader behaviour, and 7) adaptive behaviour.

 
Leadership Tip 29 - When communicating (public speaking) to a small group that don't know you, I have learnt that you need to establish credibility very early on. Try and establish that credibility before you even start speaking, by breaking the ice with a few people beforehand. Trust me on this leadership tip, that a failure to create a sense of buy-in and respect beforehand, makes the communicating much harder, less responsive and overall, simply less effective.

Leadership Tip 30 - Many leaders are polymaths. Look that one up. Leadership requires that you have a grasp of many different topics and continue to learn across a broadstroke of relevant leadership teachings: communication, vision, teamwork, negotiation, spirituality, history, business, etc. Leaders have a desire to learn.

Leadership Tip 31 - 'Nothing is more difficult than to introduce a new order of things.' #innovation #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 32 - 'Teamwork makes the dream work.' #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 33 - 'There's no I in team.' #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 34 - Conflict and the ability to work through conflict can make or break a leader. Good leaders learn to not brush the opportunity for conflict resolution aside, but in fact embrace positive conflict to harness a positive outcome.

Leadership Tip 35 - Leaders understand their character is tested in times of stress. If you want to see a real leader's character and values, then put him/her in a place of testing and trial.

Leadership Tip 36 - Accountability is not the same as judgmentalism. Leadership requires at time, the need to hold people accountable (missed deadlines, unfulfilled expectations, character flaws, etc), but this is NOT the same as being judgmental. A good leader understands the difference, even if those being 'held accountable' do not. A leader holds someone accountable even if they become misunderstood, misrepresented and labelled as judgmental.

Leadership Tip 37 - Leaders can be well respected when they take a moral stand. Chief of the Australian Army David Morrison took a stand when he filmed a speech cautioning defence personnel against violence towards women in the ranks. He spoke of having a zero tolerance. In this YouTube clip, found here, David Morrison shows leadership and moral authority. In the Australian Financial Review Boss Magazine, Morrison was selected amongst 17 other leaders for their leadership capacity and subsequent contribution to society. Of David Morrison's leadership, panellist Amanda Harkness said, 'He has sustained that position and he is another person who is fighting a system in some ways, he's a leader of a defence force which has had those cultural issues for some years and we should encourage people like that to continue their stand.'

Leadership Tip 38 - 'Methods are many, principles are few. Methods always change, principles never do.' ~ Warren Wiersbe. #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 39 - Create clarity and communicate clarity. Leadership involves the process of clarifying where you are heading and building clarity around how you're going to get there. Leaders must create clarity around their strategic direction. Leaders must communicate this strategic direction with the team.

Leadership Tip 40 - Following on from leadership tip number 39, a leader must harness the support and buy-in from the team in relation to the strategic direction.

Leadership Tip 41 -There is a difference between espoused values and actual values. An organisation may tell you that they value, 'everyone feeling welcome', and then the culture tells you the opposite. An espoused value is a value that is desired, but is not reality. Actual values are the values that in practice, characterise the organisation.

Leadership Tip 42 - You must 'enable others to act'. Building teams is an imperative in today's culture. Failure to build teams will cause you as the leader to have to shoulder the burden and the simple truth is, you can only do so much! Enabling others to act is part of Kouzes and Posner's five practices of exemplary leadership.

Leadership Tip 43 - Overcommunicate vision. Vision leaks; therefore overcommunicate it.

Leadership Tip 44 - Some employees and volunteers become bored, disengaged and indifferent, especially when fulfilling repetitive and undemanding leadership tasks. Daniel Goleman in Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (2013), says, 'To get the disengaged workers any nearer the focused range demands upping their motivation and enthusiasm, evoking a sense of purpose, and adding a dollop of pressure.'

Leadership Tip 45 - Most of our biggest expenses are personnel. There must be accountability to an employee's performance. One of the difficulties is for volunteer-based organisations, like local churches, who attempt to performance manage volunteers. Bill Hybels in Axiom: Powerful Leadership Proverbs, says, 'If staff members are doing their jobs really well-- meeting or exceeding my expectations--then I give them more freedom and look over their shoulders less.' One of the leadership challenges is to balance holding people accountable to their performance and conversely disempowering them by micro-managing.

Leadership Tip 46 - Communicate with authority, competence and clarity. Here's a post I wrote on communication, called, "Public Speaking: How to Speak without Notes."

Leadership Tip 47 - Cut red tape. That's right. Do it. Don't make excuses that it's beyond your control. Make a difference and cut red tape. Unnecessary bureaucracy burdens organisations. Most policy's are created because of incompetence and a fundamental distrust of employees to execute their work in a professional manner. Trust employees. Don't over micro-manage.

Leadership Tip 48 - In a post on Public Speaking I outline some tips for effective public speaking. If you didn't know, leadership requires taking the platform occasionally and communicating to a crowd! Some quick tips for you: Begin confidently. Know your content. Land the plane (that is, finish!). Understand the event. Know your audience/demographic and build credibility with your listening audience as quick as you can.

Leadership Tip 49 - You will not always be right. You will not always be understood. As Mother Theresa once said, 'People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway. Give the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best anyway.' #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 50 - Since we are halfway through the Top 100 Leadership Tips, let me offer you a definition of leadership. David V. Day and John Antonakis offer a comprehensive study into leadership with their textbook, The Nature of Leadership (2012). As difficult as it is to define leadership, they offer their definition of leadership before proceeding with their 600 page volume. They write:

...leadership can be defined in terms of (a) an influencing process-and its resultant outcomes-that occurs between a leader and followers and (b) how this influencing process is explained by the leader's dispositional characteristics and behaviors, follower perceptions and attributions of the leader, and the context in which the influencing process occurs (: 5).

Or as John Maxwell defines it simply (some say too simply), 'Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less'.

Leadership Tip 51 - Leaders find themselves on the cutting edge. The problem with being on the cutting edge means at times you might get cut. You might fail. Though to not be innovative and creative might be to your demise and to the demise of your organisation (one may only consider Apple in its early days or Kodak).

Leadership Tip 52 - Nelson Mandela offers this quote: 'It always seems impossible until it's done.' There is much to say about Nelson Mandela on leadership and life. One may mention his ability to forgive after 27 years of imprisonment. One may mention his passion for racial unity. One may mention the leadership capacity he had to draw people to the cause on his heart.

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."

Leadership Tip 53 - In a great leadership book by Patrick Lencioni, he highlights 5 Dysfunctions of a Team which are in summary:

1. Absence of trust— the inability to be vulnerable within a team setting
2. Fear of conflict—seeking artificial harmony over debate that is passionate and constructive
3. Lack of commitment—When there is a lack of trust and a lack of ability to deal with conflict in a team, there is a lack of commitment.
4. Avoidance of accountability—neglecting the responsibility to call other on the team to account
5. Inattention to results—focusing on personal success, status and ego before team success

Purchase Lencioni's book. It is worth the time. Find the book here: Patrick Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.

Leadership Tip 54 - Did I mention the importance of perseverance? One political leader, namely, Abraham Lincoln had perseverance. Have a quick at his story here: Abraham Lincoln: Failing Forward as a Leader.

Leadership Tip 55 - Even when you feel inadequate, continue to lead. Do not let your leadership involvement be dictated by your feelings. Some of us wake up in the morning and feel absolutely inadequate for the tasks at hand; though that does not presuppose one does not have the capacity within them nonetheless. Lead anyway.

Leadership Tip 56 - What does one believe is the ultimate reason for pursuing skills in leadership? Is it money? Is it fame? Is it corporate success? Is it church growth? I would suggest, that the moral question related to the ultimate purpose for any type of leadership is an important question. I am first and foremost a follower: that is a follower of Christ. You choose your own moral rationale for leadership success, though I would suggest that without acknowledgement of God and God's creation in which you inhabit, leadership will most likely be a walk in the park for the pursuit of useless ideals.

Leadership Tip 57 - Leadership and change management are closely aligned. In Organisation Development & Change (Waddell, Cummings and Worley, 2000), some tips for change management are highlighted. They say for effective change management you need to:

1. Motivate change
2. Create a vision of the change
3. Develop political support for the change
4. Manage the transition of the change
5. Sustain momentum after the change is complete

Leadership Tip 58 - The U.S. Army's Military Philosophy is: BE - KNOW - DO.

Leadership Tip 59 - Seth Godin, is always the one to say it as it is. To define leadership, he says, 'Leaders lead.' Got it yet? That's what they do. Don't confuse yourself.

Leadership Tip 60 - Leaders do the occasional integrity check. Is your inner character consistent with your outward persona?

Leadership Tip 61 - Leadership requires emotional intelligence. Mayer & Salovey (1997), write, "Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth." #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 62 - In Daniel Goleman's Five Components of Emotional Intelligence, Goleman highlights the need for self-regulation. 'The ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods, and the propensity to suspend judgment and to think before acting. Hallmarks include trustworthiness and integrity; comfort with ambiguity; and openness to change.' #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 63 - Stephen Covey speaks of developing habits. He says that a habit is the intersection of three particular things: knowledge (understanding what to do and why to do it), skill (knowing how to do it) and desire (motivation to do it). #7HabitsofHighlyEffectivePeople #leadership

Leadership Tip 64 - Here's a quick recap of the 7 Habits in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People written by Stephen Covey:

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood

Habit 6: Synergize

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Find a summary of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People here.

Leadership Tip 65 - Leaders commit to their own self-appraisals.

Leadership Tip 66 - 'The best leaders don't feel they have the answers to everything but surround themselves with people who are going to challenge and push them' ~ Paul Bassat (Co-Founder of SEEK employment search engine). #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 67 -What is the difference between management and leadership? Seth Godin says, 'Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.' He says more in his blog entitled, 'The Difference Between Managment and Leadership.' In a popular blog of mine on the same topic of management and leadership differences/similarities, I offer a leadership quote from Warren Bennis, 'Management is getting people to do what needs to be done. Leadership is getting people to want to do what needs to be done. Managers push. Leaders pull. Managers command. Leaders communicate.' - Warren Bennis.

Leadership Tip 68 - Commissioner Jim Knaggs speaks briefly on the importance of redemptive leadership. This is leadership that relates to redeeming the whole person. He says, 'Often, it’s a leader who is dealing with conflict resolution and understands the full ramifications of repentance, forgiveness, restitution, reconciliation and healing in these difficult matters.'

Leadership Tip 69 - Gandhi challenged his people to be the change in their world and he expressed this through nonviolence. Nelson Mandela showed forgiveness to the highest degree through the way he dealt with being unjustly imprisoned for 27 years. There is something important about morality and its impact upon leadership. Don't be devoid of good character and the having the ability to make strong, wise moral judgments. 

Leadership Tip 70 - If you want to consider leadership in action, consider a young, ruddy, handsome boy named David, who when faced with a big obstacle, mustered up the courage to act. The story that is recorded in the Bible in 1 Samuel 17, speaks of a boy, who took on the likes of Goliath. When all the Israelite people wanted to run, David took a sling shot and five smooth stones and courageously knocked down his opponent. Leadership requires courage, and this is exemplified in the life of that young boy David, who was the future King of Israel.

Leadership Tip 71 - 'Give a man a fish, you feed him for the day; teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.' ~ Lao-Tzu. #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 72 - Paradigm shifts occur when there is a change of thinking that causes us to gain further understanding and insight to a problem at hand. Albert Einstein said, 'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.' #leadership quote #paradigm shift

Leadership Tip 73 - Consider the art of listening. Are you hearing what I'm saying right now? Leaders do not just communicate, but they listen; they choose to understand. Many of us need to remind ourselves, that when people are chatting with us, to be present. To listen. It relates to Stephen Covey's habit of 'Seek first to understand, then to be understood.'

Leadership Tip 74 - 'The enemy of the best is the good' ~ Anonymous. This is really the premise of Jim Collin's Good to Great. Jim Collin's wrote, 'Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.' #leadership quote 

See Rinse your Cottage Cheese and other great leadership tips.

Leadership Tip 75 - Leaders understand the holistic nature of the human being. We can equip someone intellectually with particular insights, but what about their emotional state? We can pursue the lifting of one's self-esteem, but what about their physical health? Stephen Covey highlights in The 8th Habit, the need to consider different facets of the life of a leader/follower, namely a person's IQ, but also their emotional intelligence (EQ), their spiritual intelligence (SQ) and their Physical intelligence (PQ). Read more about that in my post: 'Stephen Covey: 4 Human Intelligences.'

Leadership Tip 76 - A leader doesn't make excuses. Take the old story of God calling Moses to leave the countryside and confront the king of Egypt and request of him to free the Israelite people. Moses was full of excuses. Sometimes the potential we have within us, is greater than our mind's ability to recognise. We could call that latent potential. Don't make excuses.

Leadership Tip 77 - Is leadership even important? Is this merely an immoral grab for power in the midst of an ego-centric world? We know by now that people exert leadership whether we label it that or not. We know 'leadership happens' in families, organisations, churches, etc. The very make-up of a family consists of parental leadership. Without leadership we often have anarchy and this is less than favourable. It is not about whether leadership is right or wrong, it's about whether the leader is leading in a way that is right or wrong. 

Leadership Tip 78 - As John C. Maxwell would say, leaders are not developed in a day. He says, 'Becoming a leader is a lot like investing successfully in the stock market. If your hope is to make a fortune in a day, you're not going to be successful' - Click here for more leadership quotes from John C Maxwell. Grow as a leader daily.

Leadership Tip 79 - Leadership and attitude is closely aligned. John Maxwell likes his little quips and says, 'Attitude determines altitude.' Victor Frankl said, 'We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number; but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way' (Man's Search for Meaning).

Leadership Tip 80 - Spiritual leadership is not just leadership in the secular sense, but leadership that is birthed from a relationship with God and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Spiritual leadership can look dramatically different from other leadership, in that what characterises these leaders is servanthood, humility, a God-reliance and a strong moral ethic. There of course may be overlap with leadership in the business arena, but while business leaders may espouse these characteristics at times, great spiritual leaders will espouse these characteristics ALL the time.

Leadership Tip 81 - Leadership = Humility. I have heard it said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 82 - Biblical leadership is about looking to the content of the words contained in the Christian Scriptures to inform one's leadership. Christian leadership is centered around the person of Jesus Christ, and allows the focus and character of the leader to be built around the example and teachings of Jesus.

Leadership Tip 83 - Christian leaders hear whispers from God.

Leadership Tip 84 - Psychology expert Kendra Cherry in her blog post, 10 Ways to Become a Better Leader, highlights are few reminders about leadership, including: Be passionate, encourage creativity, learn more about your personality type and serve as a role model.

Leadership Tip 85 - This is not a leadership tip, but click here for my Top 10 Leadership Books of all Time.

Leadership Tip 86 - When hiring you need someone with competence and character. I've heard it said, if you have to choose between the two, choose character. A leader with both competence and character is of course even better.

Leadership Tip 87 - Leaders make decisions. Now, don't let me get too simplistic here, but you know what I am referring to right? How many so called leaders can you think of who hesitate to make a decision? Leaders make decisions. They may consult, sure, but they make decisions.

Leadership Tip 88 - Leaders need to be FAT. That is, Faithful, Available and Teachable. Teaching unteachable people is difficult but one thing I know is that, leaders ARE teachable. Others may not be teachable, but leaders surely are. To not be teachable is to hold on to some egocentric philosophical outlook that suggests you know everything. You don't. Be teachable.

Leadership Tip 89 - Just because you have an opinion on something does not mean you are right. In fact, some people will hold religiously to an idea or viewpoint, irrespective of whether it is right, to simply justify their own behaviour. One may argue, for instance, against the merits of eating vegetables on a regular basis, when deep-down all they are doing is perpetuating their own bad behaviours of how they eat. I remember Dale Carnegie making the point in How to Win Friends and Influence People, when saying, don't bother showing people are wrong. They will rarely admit it, and most times they will simply find ways to justify their 'wrongness'.

Leadership Tip 90 - In Aristotle's work, the Rhetoric, he highlights three key means of being persuasive: Ethos, Pathos and Logos. Ethos is about having credibility. Pathos is about the ability to emotionally connect with your listeners and logos relates to using rationality to logically convince someone of your content. Interestingly Aristotle's writing still resonates in leadership circles today.

Leadership Tip 91 - An emotionally resilient leader is able to 'encourage the heart' of others. They recognise contributions and celebrate achievements. This kind of empathetic leadership is able to genuinely allow others to feel appreciated. You can find more about this from Kouze and Posner's five practices of exemplary leadership.

Leadership Tip 92 - 'Retail king Gerry Harvey claims top communications skills, impeccable timing and knowing what customers want are the key talents of successful salespeople' - Anthony Black. I would say this also characterises leadership in general.

Leadership Tip 93 - Jim Collins suggest that if you want to stimulate progress in an organisation, then set BHAGs; that is, have Big Hairy Audacious Goals. If you don't aim high, you won't reach the heights. Simple. People don't achieve big goals by accident.

Leadership Tip 94 - What are the results of great leadership in those who are following? People will have increased levels of self-esteem, increased self-worth and increased self-efficacy. (See The Nature of Leadership, page 270).

Leadership Tip 95 - Let me suggest a biblical leader who is etched in my mind. His name is Nehemiah. In short, he hears that in his home town, Jerusalem, the walls around the city have been destroyed. He cries and prays before God. He grabs a hold of a vision for restoration and he rallies the troops to rebuild the wall. Now, he gets the wall half built around the entire city and opposition occurs. What does Nehemiah do? He does what leaders do; he calls his helpers to continue to finish building the wall and finish what they started. Read more about the story of Nehemiah here.

Leadership Tip 96 - There was a man named Barnabas, as recorded in the New Testament of the Bible, who was known as an encourager. Barnabas 'bridged the gaps of differing opinions'. He stood by John Mark for instance, even when the Apostle Paul wanted to desert him. Encouragement characterised his leadership.

Leadership Tip 97 - The Apostle Peter had an up and down career! If you know much about Peter, he denied any allegiance to Jesus when Jesus was heading to the cross to be crucified. This was a defining moment for Peter, who realised he had just rejected Jesus Christ in the midst of other peers. What would happen now? Peter chose to get back up, and following some extraordinary circumstances, Peter became the first person to preach up a storm following the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. He went from being broken and bruised to being bold and courageous.

Leadership Tip 98 - Interestingly after all my prattling on about leadership, we see in the Biblical Scriptures that the word leadership is not used. What word is used? Diakonia: this refers to service and servanthood. Let me iterate this, leadership is synonymous with servanthood.

Leadership Tip 99 - 'Transforming leaders theoretically raise the consciousness of followers for what is important, especially with regard to moral and ethical implications, and make them transcend their self-interest for that of the greater good.' (Antonakis and Day, The Nature of Leadership) #leadership quote

Leadership Tip 100 - Even when you think all is said and done about leadership, there is always more to be said and more to be done. 

A mammoth guide to effective leadership! Compiling the Top 100 Leadership Tips was an enriching task. This Top 100 Tips on Leadership is an attempt to draw out helpful, practical tips that will enhance your own capacity to lead.