Do you know what a servant leader is? If not, then this video is the one for you.
The best leaders let those who work with them take the lead and the credit for when things go well. Those same leaders will take responsibility and not leave their employees out to dry. This video will give you some ideas about how you can learn to lead from the back and let your team shine.
I’m going to give away the secret…it’s all about asking the right question at the right time. You can only do this when you lead from the back.
In this 5 minutes short video, I’m going to show you a way to be a great leader and let others take the credit. Take a look!
Transcript
I’m sure that you would agree that leadership is one of the things that will set your company apart from others, and yet you might find yourself having a hard time with being a great leader. What if I told you that becoming a great leader is easier than you thought?
In this video, I’m going to show you a way to be a great leader and let others take the credit. How’s that sound?
Hi, I’m Josh Patrick and you know the reason I talk about leadership in this way is that when I first went into business, I was arguably one of the worst leaders of all times. Now my change from being a really bad leader, to one who was actually pretty good, was really about learning about how not to always be in control when I was supposedly running a meeting or being the person who would obviously being in control.
You know, leadership is really more about asking the right question at the right time.
And in my experience, being a great leader doesn’t mean you have to be the leader who is identified as being a leader. I call this leading from the back. You know, in fact, I think it’s better that if you do lead from the back. Because leading from the back allows several things that happen.
First thing you got to do is it really shows that you’re trusting the person that you’ve let lead the meeting. Now I can seat at the side of the table and not seat at the front of the table and by asking good questions, I’m going to be a much, much better leader, but I’m not the one who’s officially in control. And because I’m not the person who is running the meeting, people don’t look to me for the answers. They’re going to look at themselves for the answers and they’re going to start asking themselves questions – if you give people permission to do this.
Now, here’s what I found. I found that when I’m at the back of the table, or the back of the room or the side of the table, I really got permission to ask questions. If I’m at the front of the room, I might be asking questions, but people going to tell me what they think they want me to here. If I’m not the one leading the meeting, I can always look at the leader and say “What do you think about this?“ or “How can we do this better?” or “What would be something that we’re not doing and might be doing?”, or my favorite question is “What would happen if…?”.
So, you might be thinking, “Okay, Patrick, you’re not at the front of the table, you’re not really leading the meeting, but you might want to get something across. You might want to have a point that they’re not picking up by”.
And this is where you go in and you ask questions in different ways.
Now you also want to ask open-ended questions and not closed questions. And open-ended question would be “What you think about x, Y, or z?”. And a closed question is “Do you think this is the right thing to do?”.
I want to have people in open questions, so they start taking responsibility for what happens in their life.
Now we’ve all heard the example “If you give somebody a fish, they eat for a day, but if you teach somebody to fish, they eat for the lifetime”. Well, that’s what you do when you’re leading from the back. When you let somebody else lead the meetings or lead a project in your company, you’re actually teaching them to fish.
But you have to be willing to let the mistakes, learn from their mistakes and make sure they learned from mistakes. And here’s the big thing. If you decide that you’re going to lead from the back, that means you’ve decided you’re not going to be the one who’s taking the credit.
You’re going to let other people take the credit instead.
Now the truth is just because we’re owners, we’re automatically getting lots of credit for everything that happens in our company. The good and the bad. What does it make sense to let people share in some of that credit, especially when that credit is good. So my experience is, I bet it will be your experience also, is that when you lead from the back and you let your employees take the credit, that they’re going to start gaining more confidence and they’re going to start leading themselves. Isn’t this something that you want?
So why don’t you scroll down to the bottom of this, leave me a comment, let me know what you think? And oh, by the way, I have an eBook that you can also get. It’s called “Relationship and roles” and it talks about the different roles you play in your business and how the play them effectively. And again, this is Josh Patrick. I’m the founder here at the Sustainable Business and I hope to see you back here really soon.
Leave a Reply