Leadership is a journey. It brings us to the highest heights and the lowest lows.
During the journey, it’s easy to lose track of why we’re leading.
That’s why every leader needs to ask himself the question: Why am I leading?
Leadership can pull us in so many directions. One day you’re helping a team member discover where he does his best work. The next day you may be calming a quarrel between two people who are having a disagreement.
There will be days where you have no clue what you’re doing. You come to a point where you ask yourself Why?
This is why we must ask ourselves why are we leading? Why are we choosing a position of leadership?
Asking ourselves this simple question can corral us back into effective leadership and help us regain our focus. Without that focus, our leadership is spotty at best. Dangerous, at worst.
There’s plenty of ways to ask yourself why you’re leading. It can be difficult to find just the right question.
I want to help you with that today. Let’s look at a couple of different ways we can ask ourselves this important leadership question.
Ask yourself why you’re leading: This is the straightforward question. It gets to the point and doesn’t let you get away from the question.
You need to look at yourself and your motives for leading. If they’re not right, you need to get in the right mindset or get out of leadership.
Ask yourself whether you would choose leadership today: Another great question to ask yourself as a leader is if you’d still be a leader today if you had it all over to do again.
Sometimes we find ourselves doing things because we’ve always done them or because no one else would do the task. We get roped in but never get out.
Many leaders have this happen to them. And, in all honesty, they’d rather not be leading.
This could be you. Maybe you need to ask yourself this question today.
Ask yourself are you helping people become better leaders: Good leaders know they need to help those they lead become better leaders themselves.
Your responsibility is to raise up a new generation of leaders. Ones that can replace you.
If you’re not focused on this as a leader, you need to reconsider what you’re doing.
Asking yourself why you lead can be a difficult question to ask. It stirs up emotions and challenges us to think about why we’re truly leading.
We’ve got to have our hearts and minds in the right place if we want to lead well. That’s why asking Why do I lead? is such an important question to ask yourself.
By Joseph Lalonde
Source: jmlalonde
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