The Real Deal of Leadership – The Rules of the Game

What is The Real Deal of Leadership?

Get a glimpse of what the rules of the game are in Leadership.

Do you know them?

What is the game of leadership? Watch this video to find out.

 

The Real Deal of Leadership – The Rules of the Game – Video Transcript

Hello folks, so let’s ask ourselves a question, kind of an innocent question, and that question is “What is the game of Leadership”?  What are the rules? What court is it being played on?

Because I think that a lot of times the real deal is not grasped or understood in a way that there is clarity and people say “right this is leadership”, and “This is what I need to do..” .and if it is a report then “this is what I need to look up to”…

So what is it?

Well, with over 25 years of experience teaching leaders worldwide and being a leader myself in the military and in professional sports, I can tell you this, Leadership is about making people better than they are.

Let me say that again in a different way, it’s a  “People Business”, leadership is looking to your right, to your left, to your front, to your back seeing people and helping them to become better, and making them feel that they can trust you and that you can lead them and you lead them forward and because you are like that, they’ve got your back.

“Leadership” is a human business, it’s empowering people. It’s about having what’s called “soft skills”, and it’s called “soft skills” because we, humans are soft people but we need to live in a  hard world, You need to bring those soft skills like the ability to communicate, the ability to build a cohesive team, and ability to have empathy alongside your competency as a leader. You need to be competent and you need to be empathic, and the two work together.

Now we live in a world where there is a great crisis of leadership, people don’t believe anymore. Trust was replaced by cynicism, and that is a worldwide phenomenon in governments, in corporate, and even in the family structure. Children are very cynical about their parents many times. Because leadership, is what I see firstly in parenthood and then in schools and then in the work world and then in governments, in that order.

But there is one more leadership, the really first leadership. Can you guess what it is? That’s where the real game is, the game is; you the “leader” play it with yourself, which means you lead your life in such a way that it gives you the permission and the license to lead others.

Because if a person is falling apart in their own life and they don’t know how to communicate and they get into trouble all the time and they have a big ego and they only know command and control of their own lives, and they keep intending and not doing, and keep promising and not fulfilling and a word is not a word, between them and them. How can they lead others?

And that is going unnoticed in most cases. Because unless you bring leaders to see themselves and what they need to do and how they need to improve, and what self-development journey they need to be on unless that is the case, they have no validity in leading other people.

Unfortunately, in the world of today that is not the case.  A leader has become a rank. It was never meant to be a rank. A leader had to be an honorable service that empowers other people to be at their best. How distant is that from reality today?

I will let you answer that question. But we are not going to look at the distance, what we are going to look at is the hope and the promise of it. Because if Covid showed us anything, and the war in Ukraine shows us anything, and the constant bickering in governments of the “right” against the “left” shows us anything, leadership is not leading today by example and it needs to.

And there is a new generation coming up that is looking up to people but they don’t trust them.

Now this new generation is highly intelligent they live in an age of technology and they also have something extra that our generation didn’t have, I am talking about Gen-Z and Millenials that are coming up and they are really starting to take over this world. So what do they need? what do they need from the elder generation by example?

Well, I’ll tell you what they need, they need to see people they can trust who have a “weight” about them and I mean “energy weight” about them and that is called Charisma.

They need people who are humble and strong, I call it “an iron fist in a velvet glove”, you feel the strength but they don’t hit you with it. they are always soft and try to win you as a human being, and I tell you what, human beings when they are treated like human beings reciprocate, 99 out of 100 times.

So it begins with leadership, it’s all about leadership. Leadership is the signal, that takes everything forward and people look up to it, and if the leader does not have good standards, does not have principles, and they have bigotry and they have favoritism and all that, the organization is going to fall apart sooner or later. Even though we think that a long time has passed by, in real time it is very short.

So we need to be thinking about leadership in terms of the long-term, it’s not from today to tomorrow, it’s a long-term deal. Leadership needs to be a long-term deal, and a leader needs to be empowering people for the long term, and let the managers take care of the business because if you the leader take care of the managers and they take care of the people and they take care of the environment where everybody works, and it is a happy environment a human environment where mistakes are not smacked on people, but to actually correct them and give them the chance to rebuild themselves from mistakes learned and they can love the place they come to work.

I know it sounds like fantasy, but that can happen. Minor change and I show people how to make these changes, but they got to be real, it cannot be on their own terms.  When I do seminars for CEOs, Leaders, no matter what, I show them how to create an ecology, and I show them a plan they need to follow and apply different things. Because knowing it here (in the brain) doesn’t do anything. If you know things here (in the brain) and you don’t apply them you actually distance yourself more from the true function of what leadership is. the only way we get to know things is by applying them, and we need to be in a game that is for the long term.

It doesn’t end for us, it should be about the process of when we come to work as the leader that morning, we are first human beings and we let others know that we are human beings and we care about them and we show them empathy and there is a whole bunch of things.

Now in my seminars, I take the bother to break it into bits so we take for example Strategic thinking, but it is alive! Strategic communication – very alive! Emotional Intelligence is extremely alive! the ability to put the right emotions when you speak, to actually convey to people what the emotional intelligence is about in you because you are emotionally intelligent, and emotionally intelligent means that you feel people, that you have empathy. No! You don’t have to suffer fools gladly and nobody says you should.

but I tell you what this iron fist in a velvet glove is an extremely effective principle that if you apply, and I will teach you how to apply it, people will love you. but in order for that to happen you’ve got to be a dynamic leader on the move, developing and not rest on your laurels of ” I did this… and I did that …” I can do the same – but that is not the point.

The point is, today we’ve got a crisis in the world and it is a crisis of trust. Leadership lost its clout. and it needs to regain, to redefine itself in a way that fits the need, and there is a saying “Let the Need Lead”.

I work on that with leaders and I take them through a program of 10 different leadership skills that when they learn and put to practice, one of which is EQ and empathy they become irresistible to their workforce, and nobody wants to “get rid” of them.

Because they’ve got competency and they have empathy. Yes, you’ve got to be competent in what you do as a leader but that depends on your soft skills believe it or not! Although today we live in an environment where the powers that be that hard skills are what it’s all about!

No, it’s not! By 90% it’s not! By 90% it’s about soft skills, and only 10% is about hard skills, cause you need to know about computers, and you need to know marketing and things like spreadsheets.

That is not what it’s about, those things help very well as the “smarts” of the organization on-going-ly but it depends on the health of the organization which is the ability to apply the soft skills.

So what’s the game of leadership? I am giving you flavors here and you can draw from it what you can. but the game of leadership is a human business, and the rules of the game are everlasting. they are not for today and tomorrow to get the best out of your people, that is not how you should think.

How do I make my people feel happy so that they can be at their very best as human beings? Not how to get the best out of them, that is not the right way to ask it. The right way to ask is “how can I make them feel better about themselves so that they can produce better?” but not just because of that, because as a human I want other humans to succeed around me” and that is the point!

So this is where I want to bring it to an end.

I am here for you, reach out to me. There is a whole crop of intelligence and application that I will deliver to you if you come with the right mindset and with the right expectations. We need to align expectations before I can work with you. Otherwise, you will think that there is a magic wand and “boom” there is a leadership course and you are a leader! It doesn’t work like that.

Leadership is ongoing, continuing, and developing and it has to have input from people as well. So I am making this tape, it might come across a bit tough, but folks, that is because I care for people and I want them to succeed and I don’t want to sell them BS and tell them “well it’s all nice and all cozy” and promise “you’ll become leaders in my course” – No! but I will take you through an obstacle course to your advantage where you will be able to learn about yourself and others and you will gain bit by bit these special qualities of leadership and one day, without you knowing, you will pass that tipping point and you will be known as a leader, a Charismatic Leader.

Call Me

Eli Harari

The Life Coach for Professionals™

 

 

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