Leadership Thought #389 – Never Lower the Bar
Never lower the bar of your expectations or of what’s possible.
A leader’s primary job is to rally people around a common goal and convince them they are capable of much more than they think they are. People talk themselves out of success all the time. For the average person, it is easy to identify obstacles and the reasons why things can’t happen. Consequently, we often lower our expectations to achieve our goals. Leaders should never lower the bar. They should expect more of themselves and their organizations and never settle for being average or second best.
If you think about the progress that has been made in many different areas/industries just in your lifetime, it is mind-boggling. Diseases that used to be a death sentence are now curable (and this list gets bigger every year). Space travel has become routine. People worldwide have access to technological tools that were either unthinkable or the domain of a privileged few a generation ago. Countries that have only ever known the yoke of authoritarian rule and dictatorship are now experimenting with democracy. As you get older and experience life, it becomes clear that most of the limitations we’ve learned to accept and deal with in life are self-imposed.
Leaders should challenge the status quo. The best ones help us redefine and create the future. If we only ever focused on what was or is, we would never be able to fully grasp what could be. Of course, progress can be difficult. Failures are inevitable. Organizations and individuals will inevitably be tested to see how badly they genuinely want something. The leaders who won’t take “no” for an answer are what separates greatness from mediocrity. They consistently push the limits of commitment and performance until they achieve the goal/objective or achieve something that closely resembles their initial vision. Leadership is about results.
Related articles
- Leadership of the future (claudetoland.wordpress.com)
- Three Foundational Rules to Effective Leadership (rsmentoring.wordpress.com)
- Put Yourself Out There (capacity-building.com)
- On Leadership, Determination, and Consistent Effort (linked2leadership.com)
- 5 for Leadership (garyrunn.com)
- What is leadership? (claudetoland.wordpress.com)
