During an interview last week, I was asked: What’s the biggest insight you’ve had regarding leadership throughout your career?
During an interview last week, I was asked: What’s the biggest insight you’ve had regarding leadership throughout your career?
This week, I’m visiting the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) to learn more about innovation. I’m part of a small group participating in their Innovation Immersion Experience. As a student of innovation and creativity for decades, a visit to SCAD is like a kid going to visit Santa’s workshop.
During an interview last week, I was asked: What’s the biggest insight you’ve had regarding leadership throughout your career? That’s a really good question. How about you – how would you answer that question? The microphone is yours, what would you say?
A couple of months ago, Ken Blanchard hosted a virtual conference. The topic was this: What do you do with people who quit but stay on your payroll? He asked me to create a short video to share my point-of-view on this topic.
Almost 10 years ago, I had the privilege to co-author The Secret with Ken Blanchard, a book about Chick-fil-A’s point of view on leadership. It was a lot of fun doing the book with Ken and even more fun talking to groups all over the world about leadership. What I didn’t expect was the question that I received over and over again... “We’ve read The Secret, what’s next?”
For more than a decade, I’ve used the metaphor of an iceberg to talk about leadership – the 10% above the water line represents the skills of the leader and the 90% below represents their character. The Secret, a book I co-authored with Ken Blanchard, outlines what we believe great leaders do – the skills part of the picture. However, the question I have gotten consistently ever since we started using the iceberg illustration is this, “What are the character traits of great leaders?”
Ken Blanchard loves to challenge leaders with the question, “If a reporter stuck a mic in your face and said you’ve got 30 seconds – What’s your leadership point of view? What would you say?"
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