Exceptional Leader
A lot of the coaching that I do, which is one-on-one with executives involves this: all of a sudden, they've accomplished a lot very quickly. As an example, say you went to General Electric as a 20-year-old, and 15 years later, you became an executive, and you were mentored. Now, we have to create our own mentorship program so that we can begin to use those behaviors with others.
It's all about behavior.
Behaviors that you can learn so that you can be more patient, so that you can engage people, so that you can communicate with them. When we go from being average to exceptional, what does that take? It takes the ability to communicate more effectively, to be able to observe more effectively, and then to be able to act more effectively.
Those things are just not showered on us. We have to go out and learn how to do it so that we can then measure what our effect is on others.
All we are is the sum of the total influence on others. That's all.
That's the only thing that matters. And until we begin to shape that and mold that, we're not at that exceptional level. As we get closer to that, we begin to see the influence that we have. Influence isn't about walking around with your chest held high and your chin high, it's about the gratitude that people have for you being in their lives.
