{"id":4563,"date":"2015-04-16T15:03:38","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=4563"},"modified":"2015-04-16T15:04:45","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T20:04:45","slug":"leadership-getting-hard-resist-these-3-shortcuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2015\/04\/16\/leadership-getting-hard-resist-these-3-shortcuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Getting Hard? Resist These 3 Shortcuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week we held the semi-annual meeting of the Willow Creek Association board of directors, and once again I found myself taken aback by the level of leadership excellence in the room.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As the members of the board tackled issues of considerable complexity, at one point I wrote on my notepad, \u201cThese leaders are real<\/em>. They are getting it done!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

By this I meant that they had a singular focus of moving the organization forward. And they were doing the hard work of real leadership to get the job done. No shortcuts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By contrast, it brought to mind examples of leaders who might shirk the hard work of leadership and instead, take one of these leadership shortcuts\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/strong>1.\u00a0 <\/strong>Creating policies<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moving people or organizations forward requires the hard work of leadership. It requires vision casting, team building, and difficult conversations.<\/p>\n

But instead of doing this hard work, some leaders will opt instead to simply churn out a few policies.<\/p>\n

Policies might have their place. Just don\u2019t confuse them with leadership.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 <\/strong>Losing your cool<\/strong><\/p>\n

When a leader loses their cool, it\u2019s like a child throwing a temper tantrum. Both are frustrated that they\u2019re not getting their way. And so they pitch a fit.<\/p>\n

If people give in to this, it can create the illusion that there has been a leadership accomplishment. But ‘powering up’ isn’t the same as leadership. It’s more like bullying.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s just another shortcut.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 <\/strong>Creating a new org chart<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026or reorganizing anything<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A leader paralyzed with indecision will sometimes whip out a piece of paper or run to a white board and start drawing boxes, circles and lines with abandon.<\/p>\n

In time a brand new exciting organization chart can emerge, and the resulting change in reporting structures can provide yet another illusion that real leadership has taken place.<\/p>\n

But, once again, it hasn\u2019t. It\u2019s just another shortcut.<\/p>\n

Face it. Sometimes leadership is just hard. Moving a group of people forward requires tremendous effort and tenacity.<\/p>\n

And in the midst of it all it can be very tempting to simply take one of these shortcuts.<\/p>\n

But resist these easy \u2018outs\u2019. Stick to the hard work of leadership.<\/p>\n

The results will be worth it.<\/p>\n

What other leadership shortcuts have you seen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week we held the semi-annual meeting of the Willow Creek Association board of directors, and once again I found myself taken aback by the level of leadership excellence in the room. As the members of the board tackled issues of considerable complexity, at one point I wrote on my notepad, \u201cThese leaders are real.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,734,5,738,478,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action","category-change-2","category-discipline2","category-effectiveness-2","category-featured","category-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4563"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4571,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4563\/revisions\/4571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}