what separates great leaders from good leaders?

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Page 1: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Numbers alone do not define great leadership. Growth, global expansion, record-setting revenues: these are all signs of a good leader and the results of leadership.

The true mark of a great leader is how he achieves these financial wins.

Page 2: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are sure to miss the future. –John F. Kennedy

People only change out of necessity, in the face of impending crisis. This is what evolutionary psychologists call "Darwinian scripts." It's a natural part of being human, left over from the days when survival was the only goal.

In practice, it means that people focus on threats in the here and now, rather than consider what problems lie in the future.

A good leader turns around a company in crisis. The mark of a truly great leader is one who looks for improvements even when things are going well.

Page 3: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever. –Thomas Aquinas

The idea of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" plays to humanity's natural impulses, the Darwinian scripts of the average mind. Things are working fine, just leave them alone or you might screw something up!

This fails to consider the need to look to how you can make things better. Something can nearly always be better: marketing, merchandising, new ideas, and new ways of doing business.

Page 4: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. –Steve Jobs

There are two easy steps to stop running your Darwinian scripts:

Let the phone ring

Experiment

Page 5: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. –Stephen Covey

The next time the phone rings, don't answer it. It's hard to do, right? We're not done. Keep ignoring that ringing phone, only answering every third or fourth call. Practice this for a day. Did the world end? Of course not.

You are now on your way to realizing that not every demand for your time is urgent. Or, at least not as urgent as you think it is. Once you realize this, you'll be amazed at how much extra time you have. Now, you're ready for the second step in ditching your Darwinian scripts.

Page 6: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Where there is no vision, there is no hope. –George Washington Carver

The key to keeping your day-to-day business running while still looking toward the future is rapid, small-scale experimentation. Come up with as many ideas as you can, but also, bring in the rest of your team.

Sam Walton lived by this rapid trial and error process. Along the way, he built the Fortune 500's top company, Wal-Mart, from a single location in 1962 to over 11,000 today. That's a lot of trial and error.

Page 7: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never. –Duke Ellington

Employ another Walton habit: Keep a notepad on you at all times. Every time you have an idea, write it down. Look at your business and at other businesses both in and outside your industry. You never know when a great idea will strike.

Great leaders encourage input from the boots on the ground. Decisions are yours, but the different experiences and talents of other people are what make an organization great. Consider their ideas and try them. You're working on a small scale, not a grand rollout. The more experiments you try, the more successes you find. Sure, most ideas won't be better than what you're already doing, but that's the beauty of quick action. You try, you succeed or fail, you get out. Then, you take those successes and implement them on a larger scale.

Page 8: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been. –Sam Walton

This method of repeated experimentation and implementing many new ideas to find those big wins is how you build your brand as a visionary in your field. No one sees all of the hard work, the trial and error going on backstage. They only see the payoff.

It's like watching a swan glide across a lake. It looks graceful, right? However, underwater, there's a heck of a lot of paddling going on.

Page 9: What Separates Great Leaders from Good Leaders?

Jesse Gee has a long history of guiding organizations to incredible growth, beginning with his first start-up, which eventually grew to employing over $1,000 people with annual aggregate loans in excess of $1.5 billion. Today, Jesse Gee runs a successful solar energy organization that fulfills the needs of customers in 12 major U.S. markets. Never content with a single focus, Gee also has interests in dozens of businesses and serves on several boards in the energy, finance, and construction industries. Visit www.JesseGee.com to read informational ramblings from Jesse about leadership and entrepreneurship.