Workers vs Leaders

I read another portion of the book the 21 laws of leadership and another part stuck out at me particularly strongly. This section discusses the difference between workers and leaders.  This list compares good vs great vs top tier workers and leaders.

  • Good workers are willing to help solve a problem.
  • Great workers say to themselves how can I solve this problem.
  • Top tier workers figure out how to mitigate future problems.

Tellingly, even top tier workers are not leaders. Workers take resources, including their own time, and apply them to solving problems. This is a great and important skill to have. It is not, however, leadership. Analagously to this list of traits of workers are the traits of leaders:

  • Good leaders, when asked, are able to pull together a team and motivate them to solve a problem
  • Great leaders look for challenges that face your organization and pull together teams and resources to proactively solve the problems.
  • Top tier leaders build great leaders and build resources for the organization to solve future classes of problems.

Leaders take people and resources and apply them to solving problems.

Good workers solve problems. Good leaders pull together teams to solve problems.

Great workers work on solving the big picture problems by learning new skills and adapting their workflow to the problem. Great leaders work on solving the big picture problems by creating new teams to tackle the problems and create the resources needed.

Top tier workers look proactively down the road to position themselves and their work efforts to solve the next set of problems. Top tier leaders develop the leaders that will build the teams in the future to solve the next set of challenges.

If we want our efforts to be lasting, we need to figure out how to be both great workers and great leaders.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be More Effective by Simplifying

I've recently been thinking through two different topics - ultralight backpacking and simplifying what we do in our church callings. This morning I realized that the two are actually very related. In ultralight backpacking the idea is that the less your pack weighs, the more enjoyable your trip will be. You'll be able to hike further and enjoy the trip much more than someone with a heavier weight pack. This may seem redundant, but in order to be a successful ultralight backpacker, you first need to figure out how to have an ultralight pack. This involves a few critical steps: Determine what functionality you need to have on your trip. Not "stuff" but what you need to accomplish. Be realistic.  Look at the "stuff" you have. Figure out how they "stuff" maps to the functions.  Weigh each item. Get into the details. Determine how to accomplish your functionality with the least amount of "stuff".  Start a process of improving your ...
Read more

The Law of Navigation

I bought a new book on leadership for my birthday this week. It rocks! I'm only a couple chapters in to the book but I already love it. The book is The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership  by John C. Maxwell. This book is chock full of great advise and good examples. The chapter I'm on is about the "Law of Navigation." Great leaders know where they are going and visualize how to get there. The example that hit home to me is of Roald Amundsen vs. Robert Scott. Both men led expeditions to be the first to reach the South Pole. Amundsen's team managed the feat well, while Scott and his men all perished. What was the difference? Amundsen spent a lot of time thinking about the entire voyage. He could visualize the trip sufficiently well that he could spot key problems they would potentially run into. He then searched out the people who could help him solve those problems. He traveled far and wide to be able to have the knowledge necessary to successfully complete the tr...
Read more

Welcome

Image
Welcome to the Revelatory Leadership blog! This blog is about my journey in learning leadership skills and principles. While I have several leadership roles, both formal and informal, I don't pretend to be a great leader who knows how everything *should* happen. I do have a Ph.D., but it is in Civil and Environmental Engineering, which pretty much has nothing to do with leadership skills. I have taken leadership training courses, and read many books on leadership, but I find that those really do not make you into a top tier leader, they just let you know things to think about and concepts you get to work out how to apply in your life. My goal in creating this blog is to document my ongoing leadership learning. I firmly believe that great leaders continue to learn and, in fact, inspire a culture of learning.  I hope you will join me in this life-long journey of learning. Why "revelatory"? This may seem like a bit of an awkward title for my blog. (And, in fact, most of ...
Read more