Top Three Leadership Capacities for Exceptional Performance

It’s a simple question – what is the difference between leading and managing? While many of us can explain the difference between the two, the fact remains that many of us go about daily behaviour simply managing, without making the attempt to lead others. But, there are three leadership capacities the stand out above the others:
• self-examination
• sincerity, and
• response to extraordinary challenges

Self-Examination
Simply stated, self-examination is the fastest route to being self-aware. Yet, a great many leaders do not take a look inside, maybe because they’ve just never learned how to do it.

Leaders are not perfect beings. We all have a blind spot that inhibits us seeing clearly in every situation. This truth is reason enough to signal a need for self-examination. Add to this the variety of interpersonal conflicts or behavioural clashes that leaders face on a daily basis and we have all the ingredients for substandard performance. Behaviour is the tangible evidence of our personal mindset. Behaviour is a matter of choice. Self-examination is the key to making the right behaviour choice.

Sincerity
The second leadership capacity for exceptional performance is sincerity. Self-examination reveals many things, including our level of sincerity. Sincerity is synonymous with genuineness, honesty, and authenticity. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary notes that sincere is from Middle French meaning “honest”, which in turn is derived from the Latin sincerus, meaning “whole, unsullied, pure, honest, and genuine.”

The key is to realize you cannot fake it to make it when it comes to behaviour. Sooner or later the real you will become evident. So challenge yourself with a reflective question: How whole, pure and honest and genuine are you as a leader, and how do you behave when your job becomes most difficult? Or you might ask the members of your team. There is no secret when it comes to your behaviour.

Extraordinary Challenges
The third leadership capacity for exceptional performance is our ability to take on extraordinary challenges. Entrepreneur Mary Kay Ash began her celebrated career selling books door to door during World War II. After the war, she went to work for Stanley Home Products where she was repeatedly passed over for promotions and pay raises that went to her male colleagues, even though she was one of the top sales directors in the company. When Mary “retired” in 1963, she used her previous employment experiences as an exercise in self-examination and sincerity became the blueprint for the success of her cosmetic company. In 1963, with the $5000 she had as her life savings and a little help from her son, she opened her first store in Dallas, Texas. Today, Mary Kay Inc. has made more than $1 billion.

Exceptional leadership is sometimes not so much talent, as it is the willingness to take on extraordinary challenges in order to create an environment of mutual, beneficial and meaningful purpose. Making such a choice requires a special kind of thinking and behaving – the kind of thought and behaviour that develops with the skill of Positive Presence™.

The skill of Positive Presence is an innovative thought model connecting workplace behaviour to human energy and provides a systematic, programmatic methodology for equipping leaders with the knowledge and understanding necessary to cultivate exceptional leadership performance.