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Leadership Skills for Making Things Happen

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Note: This article is updated at Leadership Skills for Making Things Happen.

"A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." -- John C. Maxwell

How many people do you know that talk a good talk, but don’t walk the walk?

Or, how many people do you know have a bunch of ideas that you know will never see the light of day?  They can pontificate all day long, but the idea of turning those ideas into work that could be done, is foreign to them.

Or, how many people do you know can plan all day long, but their plan is nothing more than a list of things that will never happen?  Worse, maybe they turn it into a team sport, and everybody participates in the planning process of all the outcomes, ideas and work that will never happen. (And, who exactly wants to be accountable for that?)

It doesn’t need to be this way.

A lot of people have Hidden Strengths they can develop into Learned Strengths.   And one of the most important bucket of strengths is Leading Implementation.

Leading Implementation is a set of leadership skills for making things happen.

It includes the following leadership skills:

  1. Coaching and Mentoring
  2. Customer Focus
  3. Delegation
  4. Effectiveness
  5. Monitoring Performance
  6. Planning and Organizing
  7. Thoroughness

Let’s say you want to work on these leadership skills.  The first thing you need to know is that these are not elusive skills reserved exclusively for the elite.

No, these are commonly Hidden Strengths that you and others around you already have, and they just need to be developed.

If you don’t think you are good at any of these, then before you rule yourself out, and scratch them off your list, you need to ask yourself some key reflective questions:

  1. Do you know what good actually looks like?  Who are you role models?   What do they do differently than you, and is it really might and magic or do they simply do behaviors or techniques that you could learn, too?
  2. How much have you actually practiced?   Have you really spent any sort of time working at the particular skill in question?
  3. How did you create an effective feedback loop?  So many people rapidly improve when they figure out how to create an effective learning loop and an effective feedback loop.
  4. Who did you learn from?  Are you expecting yourself to just naturally be skilled?  Really?  What if you found a good mentor or coach, one that could help you create an effective learning loop and feedback loop, so you can improve and actually chart and evaluate your progress?
  5. Do you have a realistic bar?  It’s easy to fall into the trap of “all or nothing.”   What if instead of focusing on perfection, you focused on progress?   Could a little improvement in a few of these areas, change your game in a way that helps you operate at a higher level?

I’ve seen far too many starving artists and unproductive artists, as well as mad scientists, that had brilliant ideas that they couldn’t turn into reality.  While some were lucky to pair with the right partners and bring their ideas to live, I’ve actually seen another pattern of productive artists.

They develop some of the basic leadership skills in themselves to improve their ability to execute.

Not only are they more effective on the job, but they are happier with their ability to express their ideas and turn their ideas into action.

Even better, when they partner with somebody who has strong execution, they amplify their impact even more because they have a better understanding and appreciation of what it takes to execute ideas.

Like talk, ideas are cheap.

The market rewards execution.