What you wish you knew before becoming a successful leader

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A lot of people, who aren’t in an executive position think that if you are promoted in a company or an organization or if you become your own boss as an entrepreneur, people will just follow you because now you are the leader.

And everything becomes more easy because now you are in charge and people follow you.

Sorry, guys! But this isn’t true. Becoming a leader is mostly totally different to what you might expected.

What do you wish you knew, before becoming a successful leader?

Therefore, I invited 5 leaders with different backgrounds for my podcast show. I wanted to know from them, what they wish they knew, before becoming successful leaders.

1. Dan Lovaglia

Dan Lovaglia

We start with Dan. He is a ministry consultant and leadership coach in the Chicago area in the US.

I recently heard Patrick Lencioni author of “The Motive”, his most recent book and business leadership consultant say:
“Everyone has influence. And they probably shouldn’t.”
This quote rocked me to the core. The fact is when I stepped into leadership, the one thing that I didn’t know was that it was going to cost me something. I was going to have to pay a price.
In fact, I’ve used this phrase over the years. If I lead, I will pay a price. If I don’t others will.
My name is Dan Lovaglia. I’m a staffing and coaching associate with Slingshot group. We’re a nationwide team that works with ministries and churches across the US to build remarkable teams.
I love being part of an endeavor where we get to walk alongside people, partner with them as they grow in their leadership, grow the ministries and initiatives that they’re wanting to be about because they know that they’re stewards of something important.
And they know that if they don’t stand up, speak up, take steps forward, somebody is going to pay a price. And hopefully as a leader, they recognize – like I’ve come to recognize I’m going to pay a price first.
It’s important for me to step into leadership, knowing that I’m going to have influence, and I want it to be the right kind of influence for the right direction and the right reasons.

I think Dan is spot on. If you lead you will have to pay a price and you need to think about that before you start to become a leader.

If you like to contact Dan, just click here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danlovaglia/

2. Gleb Tsipursky

Gleb Tsipursky

Gleb helps leaders to avoid disasters. He is a best selling author, a coach, trainer and speaker and lives in the Ohio area in the US.

You should never go with your gut. Does it sound surprising to you that I say that? After all, you get so much advice to go with your gut, follow your intuition, be primal, be savage and so on.
What can Huff calls, whatever? Well, unfortunately, the people who give you such advice are just giving you the modern equivalent of snake oil.
Going with our gut. Intuition is terrible advice. It is pretty horrible because intuitions are not adapted for the modern environment. There are definitely for the ancestral environment.
Think about how we meet friends. Like let’s say how we’re meeting COVID-19. We have a very intense fight or flight response that stems from our environment.
We have to jump at a hundred shadows to get away from that one saber tooth tiger. And now people are responding to the COVID 19 with either a defensive response going out and buying a lot of stuff that they won’t need later, or the flight response, but ignoring it, they’re saying, you know,
Hey, our life is great. Everything is fine. But it can be a problem. We are not responding well at all to the reality that the COVID-19 is a huge, slow moving train wreck.
I really don’t see leaders literally preparing for the reality that we’ll be living with it for at least the next two to three years until we have a vaccine and distributed them widely.
So this is a big problem that leaders aren’t changing their business model and individual professionals aren’t changing their career track to adapt to the reality of COVID-19.

Very true. I believe I would have made less mistakes in my business life if I paid attention to this. Yes, you should never go purely with your gut intuition.

If you like to get in contact with Glen, click here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-gleb-tsipursky/

3. Jessica Dreistadt

Jessica has served as the leader of a family center system in a public school district, a shelter for families experiencing homelessness, a community development corporation, and a women’s leadership network.

My name is Jessica and I’m the facilitator of the women’s creative leadership network.
There are several things I wish someone would have told me on the way to becoming a successful leader.
And I also believe that as a leader, it’s important for us to share this knowledge with the next generation.
The biggest thing I wish that I had known is that there’s no such thing as perfect. There’s not one right way to do things or only one best choice.
Leading is really much more complex than that. When we hold ourselves to impossible standards as leaders, it just sets us up for disappointment and it wastes precious energy that could instead be put into learning.
It’s also demoralizing to the people around us. So in other words, it’s okay to make mistakes, just be open to learning from them.
And if you’re not making mistakes, then you probably aren’t taking enough.

I fully agree with Jessica. As a leader we need to recall again and again that there is no such thing as perfect.

I foyu’d like to get in touch with Jessica, click here:
https://www.facebook.com/jess.dreistadt

4. Ola Yetunde Harris

Ola is a sales and marketing expert from Johannesbourg in Southafrica.

Hi, my name is Ola Yetunde Harris. I manage several different entrepreneurship groups on Facebook, as well as a sales team.
And the biggest thing I wish I knew before becoming a leader is that you never been to get it all passive. You need to just keep moving, put your best actions in and just strive to get things done rather than get things perfect.
The other thing would be that, as a leader it is you job to always be on the look out for the best people that suit certain tasks, because you cannot win by putting square pegs in a sicko.
Or in other words, you have to look at what people natural talents are and try to fit them into the task that you need to get done.
Those are the two things that I really wish that I knew before becoming a leader and not having to force that.

Thanks Ola for giving us 2 lessons. I believe it is very important to understand that you never get it all perfect. Most important is: You need just to get moving. That’s so true. And yes looking for the right place for the right people to work for you is crucial.

If you like to get in touch with Ola, just click here:
https://www.facebook.com/olayiwola.odemwingee

5. Paul LaRue

Paul lives in the Colorado are in the US. He is a restaurant operations consultant. He is a leadership & organizational coach and speaker.

Hello, this is Paul LaRue, leadership and business consultant and founder of the UPwards Leader.
Back in my university days, I was part of the student leadership organization.
Our institutions laws had criteria for membership, solid grades, supporting the local community and being active and other student organizations.
After my second year with the group, I noticed the ideas we were founded on are becoming diluted. Sitting members were loosening the selection criteria for new members.
It was becoming more of a social group rather than an institution that stood as the standard for other campus organizations.
One member D wanted to bring his friend Robin in because he thought Robin was cool and D wanted to gain status in our group.
Robin fell short of our member criteria. D was able to get Robin approved.
Soon afterwards Robin ended up violating our bylaws and face expulsion, but D was able to maneuver and maintain Robin’s membership.
I saw this downward trajectory and organization and mentioned it to a fellow member, but we failed to act.
Two years after I graduated, our organizations charter was permanently destroyed. It was then I realized that culture with proper checks and balances is essential for the success of any group or company. Bringing in a board of people do the culture fit, not ego or status is about the purpose of any organization and the glue that holds it together.
When culture is not held as the measure of what an organization is and who his people are, that institution will inevitably fall apart. It was a valuable lesson that has served me well all these years.

Thanks Paul for that important insight. Yes, in any business or organization it is crucial that proper checks and balances exist. The culture fit not ego or status of the people involved holds an organization together.

If you like to get in touch with Paul, click here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paullaruejr/

Thanks a lot for all participants. I’d like to end this post with an inspiring quote from Jack Welsh: