My First Axiom for Leadership

Roast of the day: Medium

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Leadership Summit which is hosted by Willow Creek in Chicago. Our church is a satellite site for this event each year, and I found the experience very inspiring. Bill Hybels was one of the keynote speakers at the event. During one of his addresses, he introduced his latest book, Axioms, which I promptly purchased.

Bill defines axioms as leadership proverbs. In his book, he outlines about 76 axioms that he has come up with over the past 3 decades that are key ideas or thoughts for effective leadership. Each of these axioms are captured in simple phrases or proverbs that can be easily remembered and repeated. The concept is quite powerful.

During his teaching at the conference, Bill outlined one leadership principle that really rang true to me for effective leaders. As I did not find an axiom in his recent book that succinctly relates this idea, I've decided to come up with my own axiom to describe this key point in effective leadership. It is as follows:

Success Shared. Blame Beared.

The basic idea behind this axiom, or leadership proverb, is that to be an effective leader one must be willing to share credit with his/her team while at the same time take personal responsibility when things don't go according to plan. My feeling and experience is that leaders mastering this skill will find themselves surrounded by a team that is 'sold out to their cause' (whatever that might be). In my opinion, this is a key factor in effective leadership.

Unfortunately, it seems that as leaders we mess this up far too often. It's so easy to want to pin the success of a specific outcome to our chest or place the blame on the team when something doesn't go right. If you find yourself in a leadership position, try to remember this little axiom. I think it will serve you well.

The Anticipatory Theory

Roast: Medium

A colleague of mine and I recently returned from a business trip in Florida. Our local sales representative played host during our visit and we had the pleasure of meeting his wonderful family. While having dinner together one evening, I seized the opportunity to proliferate on my theories of time and LRPs (if you are unfamiliar with this term, please refer back to my previous posts). I was intrigued and pleased to hear some of the interesting ideas that both our sales representative and his wife had on the subject. I thought I'd share a bit from that discussion.

If you've been a faithful reader of my blog, you know that I have a few theories on why the passage of time seems to accelerate as we grow older. However, after my discussion with my friends in Florida, I must admit that there are probably quite a few other theories that deserve investigation. One of the main ideas we discussed during dinner last week revolved around child-like anticipation. Thus, I have coined this as the Anticipatory Theory of Time.

The basic logic of this theory is that time will seem to pass slower when we are anticipating something of significance to take place. Do you remember as a child when your parents announced that the family would be taking vacation to Walt Disney World during Easter break? The months leading up to that planned vacation always seemed to take forever. Why is that? Even as an adult, I have experienced this same phenomenon as we plan our annual family vacations to both Door County and the Wisconsin Dells. It seems as if the anticipation of the upcoming event acts as a catalyst for slowing down time, at least in our minds. Granted, I have only been introduced to this notion recently, so I have not taken the time to ponder the full effects of anticipation - but I am intrigued by this new theory.

Perhaps when considering your next LRP (Life Reference Point) event, you should consider planning it well in advance. By combining both the ideas of LRPs and the Anticipatory Theory, you may find that slowing the passage of time is seemingly possible - at least on a relative basis.