Business Man with an apple

In order to increase our lead­er­ship capac­ity, we must truly believe that self lead­er­ship pre­cedes our abil­ity to effec­tively lead oth­ers. I am sim­ply call­ing this step Be Healthy. Note: This post is part of a series on Increas­ing Your Lead­er­ship Capac­ity. Click here for the pre­vi­ous step.

A healthy leader repli­cates and attracts healthy fol­low­ers. And the con­verse is true as well: an unhealthy leader repli­cates and attracts those who are unhealthy.
In order to be effec­tive, we as lead­ers must be healthy in how we think, how we process, how we care for our­selves and those clos­est to us, how we treat our teams, how we deal with chal­lenges and how we communicate.

Here are some ques­tions to ask your­self to help you iden­tify where you might be able to improve your health — and ulti­mately your abil­ity to lead.
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Digging a Hole

This topic is front and cen­ter for me right now as the CEO of Build­ing Cham­pi­ons. I know that we must be very inten­tional with how we tap into and develop those that are on the team. They all have gifts, tal­ents and pas­sions that if inten­tion­ally devel­oped will enable them to help the orga­ni­za­tion grow in the years ahead.

So many times, lead­ers will make the mis­take of look­ing exter­nally for this needed capac­ity before really exam­in­ing who on the team has the poten­tial to fit the need and already under­stands the DNA and lingo of their culture.

Over the next sev­eral weeks, I will share one step per post to help you grow your lead­er­ship capac­ity and expand your organization’s reach and effectiveness.

Step #1 — Own Your Role
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Video Camera

What is sim­ple is under­stood — and what is under­stood gets done. Lis­ten as Daniel encour­ages lead­ers to find ways to sim­plify their processes to improve their leadership.

Video Camera

How are you using your lunches? In this Lead­er­ship Moment, Daniel talks about how he uses his Mon­day Lunch Dates to invest in him­self and his mar­riage — mak­ing him a bet­ter leader for it.

Seat of Knowledge

How Little I Know

December 2nd, 2011

I have really enjoyed this year. It has not come with­out its tri­als and chal­lenges but the bless­ings have so out­weighed any of the dif­fi­cul­ties. There is just so much to be grate­ful for.

Now this may come as a sur­prise, but one of the things that I am most grate­ful for is a deeper aware­ness of just how lit­tle I know. If I leave it at this, many of you might be some­what con­cerned. After all, you invest time in this blog look­ing for insights — not the ram­blings of some­one who knows nothing.

But this aware­ness of how lit­tle I know has been really free­ing and excit­ing. The truth of the mat­ter is that I am most likely more than halfway through this jour­ney called life, and I still feel like so much of it is an experiment.

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