Nonprofit Leadership, Innovation, and Change

Let the Strongest Leader Go First

On my Thanksgiving trip to visit family in Alaska I spent some time with my dad snow mobiling on the miles and miles of trails near their home.

As my dad and I rode from trail to trail, we embarked an a trail which hadn't been ran on since a fresh six inches of snow had fallen the night before. If you're a snow mobile rider, you know it's tough to ride a snow machine in fresh powdery snow. It's super easy to get stuck, to get buried, and to have to dig your way out can take quite a while.

As we embarked on the new trial, it was obvious this would be a tough one to get through successfully. The fresh snow was deep, and the trail started with a steep beginning that felt like we were traveling straight up.

My dad was on the fastest and strongest snow machine of the two. Mine was a little older, slower, not as strong and a little more sluggish when it came to pressing on the gas.

As we embarked on the new trail, it was obvious that dad had his snow machine floored and was giving it almost full gas. As he blazed a groove up the trail, I followed right behind driving in the grooves of his path.

It was obvious to me that I was only able to make it up the hill and up the new trial because he had blazed a path for me which I could follow. His snow machine was stronger, faster and better equipped for the tough terrain ahead, and if I would have attempted in on my own, I would have gotten stuck.

This is also true for leaders, I know that I'm not always the strongest and most effective leader. So sometimes I need to see other people blaze a trail for me that they can easily follow. I need to have someone who is out in front of me who is stronger, faster and better equipped to deal with what is ahead in our work world.

Often we need a big strong leader to be out in front blazing the trail.

Learning in a new position

Last year began working in a new position at United Way. It is a new position, in a new department, with a new person to report to, and new peers to work with on our team.

As I have had to learn so many new things in this position, it occurred to me it’s not just skills that I have to learn, I have to learn how to work with my peers as a team.

There are two things a person must learn in a new position:

• The skills needed to get the job done
• How to work as a team with new coworkers.

The skills can be learned in a training room, training manual, or software program. However, the people skills are much more difficult to learn. It takes experience, failure, intuitiveness, and some team building activities before you can really work effectively with other people as a team.

Working effectively as a team starts with finding out the needs and desires of the person you are working with. What do they value? Do they need to be affirmed and recognized for their work? What is their style for communicating and interacting? Do they prefer email over telephone?

This is the basic stuff that takes a long time to learn about the people you work with.