Leadership is About Balancing These Two Things – Behind the Scenes
You can’t be in just the forest or the clouds. Leadership is about balancing being in both. Today, I share with you about being in the details of work and doing the visionary work. Discover why Leadership is about balancing these activities. Inside this video, you will get an insight into how to balance your time so that you can connect with your people and lead the people to the future.
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Leadership is About Balancing: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
Today we’re going to talk about the forest and the clouds. What is the forest in the clouds have to do with your leadership? Well, it’s simple. Most of the time leaders spend either all of their time in the clouds, looking at the vision and communicating that across the team. And they forget about the trees. But sometimes you have those leaders that get stuck in the trees, they’re stuck in the forest. And so they can’t see the vision going forward.
[0:28]
They’re stuck in the middle of the work. And you know, probably which one you are right now. But your job is not to be in the trees all the time, and not to be in the clouds all the time. But your job is to actually figure out how to balance those two.
[0:43]
How do you truly create the space to lead your people by having a vision keeping your heads above the the trees in the clouds, if you will, looking out beyond this, looking at challenges coming down the road, looking at the competitive landscape, looking at innovations are going on in industry, and then you spend some of your time in the trenches, or the trees, if you will. Those are the things that are most important is figuring out how to balance those. But most CEOs, I find, are really only good at one of those.
[1:15]
They really feel great and comfortable. You know, really getting in the trenches in with the people and doing the work going to the meetings all the time, I was having a great conversation with my friend Dave are on this. And he talked about the difficulty as a CEO, or managing partner of a company to really create that balance of in the clouds and the visionary work versus in the trees in the forest work. And that challenge is something that he struggles with all the time.
[1:43]
So I thought I’d create a video about really what it’s like when you have it right. Sometimes you have to be in the trenches, and sometimes you have to be connected to the people in such a way that you have to be in those meetings. But you don’t always have to be there. If you think you do. It’s dangerous. And sometimes you have to be the visionary for the company, you have to have your heads above the work, you have to have time to think you have to have the space for you to see things that others aren’t even concerned with, because you’re looking three years down the road five years down the road.
[2:18]
Now, as you think about this coming out of this whole COVID issue, there’s a lot of challenges right now, you may be covered up with work, and not have time for visionary work, you may not be able to see three years. So your job is to see six months down the road. What will the culture look like? What will the team look like? What were the kinds of clients we’re doing? Are we innovating or are we trying to stabilize right now?
[2:42]
Your job is to keep your head above the trees at times, and then get back into the trenches with the people. You can’t do it one way or the other. You’ve got to figure out how to balance both. And it’s a real struggle for a lot of leaders founder CEOs They’re trying to run bigger organizations that are scaling fast, trying to be agile, if you will, being quickly moving around all of the things going on. But you have to be able to do that you have to be able to see short term and long term, you have to be able to see the now and where you’re going. And your job is to balance those two.
[3:21]
Now, sometimes you think about this, it is a difficult challenge because you can’t be in all the meetings that you need to be tuned in. So you rely on your team. I’ve done a lot of videos about empowering them. You get to create those status updates in the meeting so that you are aware of what’s going on. But you don’t have to be there all the time. And hopefully, you trust your team enough to know that you don’t have to be there all the time. I create videos like this to help you tune in to a new way of leadership.
[3:49]
This is just a simple one. But I do a lot of videos around leadership. So I want you to check out the other videos we have in this library of leadership and growth to help you be a stronger, more effective visionary leader, but also to help you grow your company to that next level. When you think about leadership, you want to make sure that you’re building a team of A-players. If you haven’t already downloaded the latest training, absolutely free, go to genehammett.com/training, you can learn about the three mistakes in building a team of A-players that you have to address.
[4:25]
Today, we just talked about some slices of that. But inside that training will give you more depth and context to help you be the leader your team deserves. And again, it’s absolutely free. When you think about growth, you think about leadership, make sure you think about growth Think Tank. My name is Gene Hammett. I’m asking you to go out there and lead your people to be the leader that they crave. As always lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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