Learn, Share, Grow - Be The Leader You Wish You Had

November 21, 2022

Below is a lesson from Simon Sinek on what it takes for great leadership, as well as our key learnings.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

https://youtu.be/Swa34BiA_Xg

Key Learnings:

•  The closest thing to leadership is parenting -- you have to be an infinite student of parenting. You're constantly consuming how to deal with this constantly changing challenge of being a parent -- ups and downs, successes and failures. Leadership is the same -- Great leaders are students of leadership.
• Leadership is a lifestyle -- what I need to do to look after people. Includes things like listening, learning how to give and receive feedback, learning how to have effective confrontations, how to discipline when necessary in a way that's constructive, roam the halls and get to know people, how to ask questions, be curious.
• Some people are naturally good at things, some are not for various reasons but we can all learn. There are many, many things we have to do and constantly work on to be a great leader and to create that environment.
• It is so much easier to build a company based on short term ambitions than it is an infinite cause. It's hard to build trusting teams. It's hard to be a parent. It takes courage to play the infinite game because we will be swimming up stream in a world that is very finite driven. The pressure is great and how do you stand up to massive pressure? Courage! And courage comes from external relationships!  You need external support to do something difficult.
• We have to take the time to take care of our people and nurture our relationships because when we will be doing something difficult -- swimming up stream -- innovating and something different, there are days we will bat ourselves, get knocked on our ass, days storms will arise, and we have to have people who say "I've got your back! You need to do this! The world needs you! Keep going! I believe in you!" Courage comes from our willingness to do this for others and their willingness to do this for us.
• When we commit ourselves to a just cause and we are willing to nurture our relationships, the great thing is we take a lot of people with us and change the world for the better -- an infinite life! To leave the world better than we found it, leave our companies and families stronger and far more capable than what they can do without us.
• Don't try and influence that which you cannot influence. Don't try to control that which you cannot control. An infinite mindset is that I CAN influence and take care of the people around me, the people who work for me, and even the person I work for. 
• No matter where we are inside the organization -- leadership isn't about rank or authority. Leadership is about taking care of the people around us.  Anyone can be a leader -- the first choice is that they have to want to be.
• Commit to seeing that those we work with on a daily basis love coming to work -- they feel that someone's got their back, they feel supported, that someone cares about them as a human being, listens to them, knows their story, allows them to be themselves. When this happens, those teams becoming high performing, becomes super tight. Then someone goes to another team and they take what they've learned. 
• Be the leader you wish you had. Become a student of leadership -- study it, practice it every day.