Empower Your People With Archetypal Leadership
Leaders Lead By Example
Setting a good example is vital for leadership. It’s not just about being the one to have great ideas or the one to pay for other people’s contracts. A splendid leader isn’t just a resource but a source of continual impetus for growth. If the people around the leader are like sunflowers, the leader is not just the sunshine, the fence or the water, the leader is like nature itself guiding and feeding all the way. To set a good example we have to consider the archetype we want to establish. If we are the stencil and our people are the pencil, what shape will they end up with? This is not up to the pencil, it is the stencil that determines what happens next. Sure, the pencil can be lacklustre, unsharpened and sloppy, so the stencil has to account for this too. Ever noticed that on most stencils we find a narrow groove that only a sharp pencil can enter? Only a sharp pencil can be used and it can only go where the groove permits. This archetypal image can be repeated again and again with a negligible variation.
Here are some fundamentals we need to take care of in order to project an archetype that empowers those around us.
Continual Challenge. Complacency kills creativity, routine reveals recklessness and resentment. To stay on top of the field and continue to innovate with market-beating services and products it’s vital that fresh and new ideas manifest. We don’t want to pile on the pressure and force new things, this is how mistakes are made. By taking structured and analytical approaches to the process of innovation with brainstorming and reverse virtue conceptualisation, we can design new operations and items that serve our market the best.
Involve Those Around You. It’s not all about you and your mission to achieve. You as a leader are responsible for everyone who follows. We have to appreciate that the wealth of information and ingenuity contained in us is mirrored in each person, and even more so in the group. We have heard the one that something can be greater than the sum of its parts, and within group thinking, this is clear and apparent.
User And Customer Experience. The experience of the client is a reflection of the team and its intentions. How do your audience and customers react internally and externally when confronted with your output? Our customers and clients are an essential part of our team, without them, there’d be no point in anything else you do. The way these people feel about you and your team is an asset. We have to make sure it’s kept in the best possible condition.
Individual Journeys. Everyone is on their own personal journey through life. We are there for them on a level beyond the casual network acquaintance. Our role in the lives of those who we are leading is to invest in their personal future as much as their joint role within our organisation. We’re all free individuals and have a right to better ourselves by expanding our knowledge, interests, and responsibilities. Some of us are happy to get by with minimal ambition, provided we have enough to live. Others want the whole world at their feet and won’t stop until they have it. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and whoever it is we work with, their personal journey is something we should invest in.
Be The Person Your Boss Would Love If You Had One. There are those employees who take what they can, do as little as possible, and act like they own the place. Often contracted in and well-aware of the line they mustn’t cross, nightmare team members and employees seem to think they stand apart from the rest of us. We can’t really trust them with anything solid and so they are forever left to their own devices or made to work as assistants. When we don’t have someone keeping tabs on us, because we’re the leader, it can be easy to become this sort of person. If we do, we will give the impression that it’s acceptable and others will feel justified in acting the same. We have to be the swot of the class, the nerd in the room, and the geek in the cinema. As long as we let others know how intensely seriously we take our own role, we will project the notion of excellence to all who we work with.
Rowan Colver is the Editor of Homunculus Media
