Six Paradoxes of Leadership
1. The Balance Between Confidence and Humility
Humility recognizes it’s all of us working together. Confidence is putting it all together. You must have both characteristics in order to be a leader.
2. Leveraging Both Vision and Blind Spots
Vision provides the target to hit. Working in the blind spots (the methods and creative ideas you haven’t tried before) provides the ability to try unconventional means to hit it.
3. Embrace Both Visibility and Invisibility
The visible leader is a model. The invisible leader is a mentor.
4. Being Both Strong-Willed and Open-Minded
- Being strong-willed shows tenacity
- Being open-minded shows teachability and adaptability, and it demonstrates that you can accept others’ ideas if they are better.
5. Both Teaching and Learning
When you’re a leader, you must both be willing to teach others, and humble enough
to learn– from your mistakes, and from others. When you stop learning, you start going backwards.
6. Being Both Timeless and Timely
We must remain timeless in that our values, our character, and our overall ethic should remain the same. But we must be timely in that we cannot be using the same methods three years from now that we are using today.
For those who have been in business for many years, we at CityLead want to remind you of an old fishing principle: “When the tide is falling, that’s when the fishing is best.” It is now, in your later years, that you know more than you ever did and can influence others for good. So get that fishing pole and start helping people.
To those of you who are younger or are newer in business, seek out the expertise of those who have been in your field for longer. If you don’t know what to do, ask someone with more experience.
