Let’s pause to put some perspective on the GrowFARM Personal Leadership articles so far. Why? It is time to expand the definition of leadership and go on to a new level of excellence.
In article #1, I defined personal leadership as “Stepping up our own game to create the results we really want.” We need a paradigm change to get away from the poor and inconsistent results most of us are used to. This is a personal choice and only we can do that for ourselves. Next, we discussed getting focused on what is most important and prioritising to do only those actions that are going to take us there.
The third article on Personal Leadership talked about doing those action plans with discipline to see them through. The next 3 articles discussed staying focussed as you went about doing the business, using simple systems to aid in that and sticking tight to universal principles. The last article talked about patterns and simple systems that Farm Business Owners need, in order to have a stable and successful business.
But why do we need to expand the leadership definition? Until now I have outlined what we need to do anyway just to operate well and enjoy what we do – the price of entry to the playing field if you like! To really play and have a high chance of nailing the results most important to us, we have to leverage our abilities by leading others! They could be employees, business team members or other farm business owners who we want to work together with to capture opportunities. We must have solid personal leadership first before we can have solid and enduring organisational leadership – strong leadership of self means you qualify to lead other people.
I am talking about moving from being a Self Employed Thinker to being a Business Owner Thinker. We can either do everything ourselves and get busy being busy, or we can use the leverage principle to get a far better result for more people and for all involved to have great lives! So here is Stephen Covey presenting a far more encompassing definition of leadership:
“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves”
Think about this definition. Isn’t this the essence of the kind of leadership that influences and truly endures? By thinking and operating in this way, you start to see personal responsibility develop within your team and within others outside of your team. Everything works so much better with the right people contributing their best to the business and you won’t need to “motivate” them! Even if there is just you running the farm, you still use the services of bankers, accountants, stock agents, fertiliser reps, ram sellers, school teachers for the kids, farm merchandise reps…. The list goes on! To have a great business with others helping you to do it, you must be strong in personal leadership yourself. You don’t have to be a do-it–to-it-kick-ass kind of person but you need to be the best you can be – which brings us back to the above original definition of Personal Leadership.
Notice here the “Inside-out” approach as opposed to the popular “Outside-in” or quick fix approach so prevalent in society today. If you can stay disciplined and continue to do what it takes to be effective yourself, then you will be able to develop that into leading an excellent organisation and the excellent people involved with it. Who knows, but this path may even develop the leaders we need in our great industry!