Key Leadership Tenets

Excerpt from “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action” by Simon Sinek

CHAPTER ONE ASSUME YOU KNOW On a cold January day, a forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years earlier, had commanded his nation’s armed forces in a war that resulted in the defeat of Germany. The young leader was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. He spent the next five hours watching parades in his honor and stayed up celebrating until three o’clock in the morning. You know who I’m describing, right?

Some of you would have guessed ‘John F. Kennedy’.  Without the timeline specified, it could as well have been ‘Adolf Hitler’…..

Key leadership tenets I would like to amplify:

We all make assumptions in our day-to-day life (and that’s a good thing !!!).  The assumptions we make are driven by our experiences we gained during various learnings/interactions/events from our past. 

• We would be grossly amiss to believe rigidly that our assumptions are always correct. 
• That brings us to a key aspect of leadership, HUMILITY.  Humility is the ability to accept one’s weaknesses publicly. “I DIDN’T KNOW THAT” is a wonderful phrase, next only to “THANK YOU”.
• TRUST is the only concrete binding force between living beings.  And, FALLIBILITY is the basic tenet for building trust. Anyone who believes they are “infallible” will never be trusted, period…