ELITE PERFORMANCE SERIES
The Leadership Guide
What does it really take to become a leader? This is a question that has grappled my mind for a long time. While I have learned extensively about the multiple facets of leadership from academia and business, I’ve always wished for a quick read that outlined just the essentials. I’ve wondered if it was even possible to distill the essence of leadership into a simple, short, and high-impact guide — one that could be quickly perused and then executed flawlessly for the rest of our lives. With this purpose in my mind, here’s a leadership guide with ten key insights that you can use to accelerate your leadership journey — an effort culminating from my decades-long journey of intense learning and deep reflection.
1. Develop a Leadership State of Mind
Our life is essentially a reflection of who we are on the inside. So, if we desire to be a leader, we simply need a state of mind that enables the behaviors and choices required to create that desired outcome in our life. As such, leadership is really a state of mind — one that enables thoughtful choices which lead to high-impact outcomes. You can develop this by cultivating your mind with powerful ideas that will put you on an accelerated path to leadership in all its forms when executed consistently over time.
Many years ago, I came across a simple idea — do better today than you did yesterday. This simple and yet powerful idea resonated with me and has become a part of the mindset I bring to every moment in life. So ask yourself what set of ideas govern your mindset and how these are manifesting in your life. Do you show up ready to play at your personal best at every moment and in every situation? Do you see the best in people and inspire them to be a better version of themselves? Do you have a bias for taking decisive action and creating outrageous value? Do you reach for something higher? Do you consistently go the extra mile? Do you underpromise and overdeliver? Are you focused on continuous improvements and relentless innovation? Do you have a sense of genuine curiosity that sets you up to learn something new every day? Do you have an elevated level of awareness that allows you to sense, process, and respond to the mildest unspoken or indirect signals in your environment? Can you think on your feet and adapt quickly to changing circumstances? Do you see opportunity in difficulty? Can you stand unflinchingly resolute in the face of adversity and have an unwavering focus on your goals? Can you swiftly resurrect yourself from the brutal throes of failure? Do you have a faith in yourself that is far greater than your fear of failure? Do you understand that success and failure are simply two sides of the same coin? Do you understand that the true reward is the journey that awaits you and not the inevitable moments of both success and failure? Can you really finish what you started? Can you live your values without compromise? Do you forgive the follies of others but never forget the lesson? Have you taken ownership of your life and personal responsibility for your actions? How often are you really in the present moment? Do you live your life like it’s your last day on the planet? Can you consistently do all of these things? Have you developed the inner framework required to enable these behaviors and choices? So do you have a leadership state of mind?
2. Build your Connection and Influence
There are times when we meet people who leave an indelible impression on our life. Their stardust rubs off on us — their character, core beliefs, values, and vision for life inspire us to be better and reach higher. These are leaders who are best expressing the leadership behaviors of connection and influence. They understand that life and business are really about people. To accomplish anything of significance, you need to connect with people, influence them with your ideas and lead them not just to a great outcome but a better version of themselves.
You can start by examining your sphere of connections and influence. How often do you speak up in meetings? Do you ever leave a team call without contributing in some meaningful way to the conversation? Do you get invited to meetings outside your usual work sphere because people value your thoughtful and constructive observations? Do you have a relationship with your skip-level manager? Do you know what excites them about life outside work? Have you really connected with them? If you were to ask for something, how likely are they to say yes? If you wouldn’t get a yes, who might get a yes for the same request in the organization? How could you emulate their behavior to get to a yes for yourself? If you were to call a meeting on the next big idea, who is the senior-most stakeholder in your sphere that will attend? Will it be your manager, your skip-level manager, the leader of the business unit, or perhaps the CEO? Introspect and benchmark for your current level of influence in the organization. To elevate your leadership presence, think about specific actions you might take to connect with the next level of cross-functional stakeholders across business units and the value you will create to influence them.
First, start by clearly defining your value proposition. What value can you bring that will make things better for you, others, the business, and the world? How can the people in your organization help you in creating that value? It could be support for a novel idea, permission to try something new, getting an introduction to another leader in the organization, or something else of value to you and the business. Now go and ask for it. Will you get a yes every time? Maybe not. Think about what’s important to each person you want to influence. Now frame your request from that perspective. For example, suppose you are influencing your CFO. You can improve your chances of getting to yes by framing your request in terms of what matters to them — decrease in expenses, increase in revenue, and potential for completely new value creation both in the short and long term. Get good at asking because nobody knows what you want until you ask for it. And you’ll be surprised when they start to say yes. I know I certainly was. As such, influence is ultimately the art of getting to yes.
3. Listen to Your Inner Voice
At the foundation of great leadership lies a strong and thoughtful moral compass. It deals with our ability to do what’s right regardless of our personal preferences, the difficulty of execution, or popular opinion. This does not mean that you should take egotist, imprudent and insensitive actions without regard for consequences and impact on others. Instead, it’s simply about respectfully, thoughtfully, and empathetically standing up for what you believe is right. Be fearless. Be you.
Are you able to listen to your inner voice and surge ahead with courage? Can you really do what you think is right, even if that is unpopular? Do you care what others think of you? Is social approval important to you? Do you want to be liked? Or do you care what you think of yourself and value living life by what matters to you? You know what they say about people and opinions — everyone has one. What really matters is if you are living true to your values, focused on your goals, and working on getting to a better you. Leadership is about taking ownership, having courage, and shouldering responsibility for actions that are consistent with your inner thinking. So what will you do today to do what’s really right for your life and the business?
4. Build Community and Culture
At the core of every human being is a search for a feeling of belonging — an association and connection with someone or something that is long-lasting. This applies even if you are the creator personality type who thrives primarily on individuality and the desire to stand out by creating something new and exceptional — even you will enjoy the sense of belonging with like-minded creators. Great leaders recognize that human potential can be best actualized when they create a community where people have a sense of belonging and a culture that reinforces the feeling of being a valued member. It’s about creating an environment of psychological safety where diverse ideas are welcomed, individual thought leadership is actively encouraged, unique strengths are allowed to shine, and opportunities are available for making a valuable contribution towards our collective future.
A simple examination of your team meetings will reveal your leadership story on building community and culture. Is everyone contributing to the discussion from across levels? Are people freely sharing contrary opinions and new approaches? Do people build on the ideas of others and function as one unit? Is there a natural, engaging team conversation on topics without being inhibited by the team power structure? Are people excited, sharing laughs, and building camaraderie in the meetings? Do they take the initiative to do things you never asked of them? Do they often share topics that are non-work related? Are they cross-pollinating information across team members? Is there a sense of trust that the team shares? Have they ever told you that they love being a part of this team? What is your story, and what can you do to make it better?
5. Connect to a Purpose Larger than Yourself
You can sum up life in one sentence — life is a very short journey. If you don’t live your life intentionally, it’ll be over before you know it. As Andy Dufresne said in The Shawshank Redemption, “Get busy living or get busy dying.” Given our relatively short time on this planet, a life purpose limited to personal achievement will only lead to limited personal fulfillment. It is when you truly connect with a purpose larger than yourself, with the spirit of service and contribution, that the universe fills you up with fulfillment far beyond what individual pursuits can ever provide. While this might seem counter-intuitive, it is the real secret — when you give to life, it gives back manifold.
Take a look at the leaders around you. I’m sure you’ll find many people making contributions to either their professions, communities, countries or the whole world. They are all touching and enriching other human lives in some way. As such, leadership in its highest form is about service and contribution. It’s about making an impact on people’s lives, no matter how small, all in order to turn the wheel of life towards a better future for all. When it comes down to the twilight of your life, what really matters is what you have done to serve humanity and if you have been a blessing. You’ll find that success is ultimately meaningless if you have not done your bit along the way to make this world a better place for all. So don’t let that regret haunt you in your final days.
A big part of contribution is investing time and money in causes that create value in the lives of others. So they and future generations might enjoy what life has so generously given to you. You can start by sharing 10% of your time and income right away. Feel you are not ready for that yet? Do you think you’ll be able to do that when you are in a better job and improved financial health? Let’s imagine that future for a moment. You are now successful and make a million dollars a year. Do you think you’d be ready to give away $100K towards causes that improve the lives of others? No, you won’t be able to do that unless you start giving your 10% today. You can even start with 1% if that helps, but contribution is a mindset that manifests only if you start early in life.
6. Have Great Clarity of Vision for your Life
I’ve found that most people plan their vacations to the smallest detail. Yet when it comes to their personal life, which is far more valuable, they are usually sleep-walking as time slips by like grains of sand. So as a leader, you need great clarity of vision if you wish to make something of your life. It’s about defining that future state of yourself. You need a sense of elevated awareness of your life goals and be staggeringly clear about what’s important to both the business and your life. And it’s absolutely critical to follow that up with the rigorous discipline and inspiring passion that’s necessary for flawless and timely execution.
So how do you define a clear vision for your life? Let’s imagine that your time on this planet has come to pass. Who is around you at this time? What would you like them to say about your life? Do they miss you? Are they reminiscent of the impact you’ve made on their lives? Do they speak about your personality, values, beliefs, career, achievements, finances, health, prosperity, a sense of adventure, contribution, inner life, a combination of these things, or something else? What is your vision for the future you?
What might represent a picture-perfect life for you? Does it include a beautiful home that allows you to unwind after a hard day’s work? How about a love for what you do for a living? Who are you eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with? Is it breakfast with people and books that inspire you, lunch with friends, and dinner with family? How important is family to you? What regrets do you not want to have when you reach the end of life? Do you have a penchant for any non-work-related activities? What would you be doing if you didn’t have to earn a living? Maybe you love driving your bike in the mountains every week? Maybe you like doing that on a Wednesday when it’s calmer and quieter than on the weekends? Perhaps time at the beach and surfing is the thing for you? Or are you the spiritual type who likes to read, meditate and reflect far away from the hustle and bustle of city life? Perhaps you love music and culture and want it to be an integral part of your life? Who are you today, and who do you want to be in the future? What will enrich your life outside of work? In addition to journaling about this future, how about using representative images and quotes to build a collage so you can visually remind yourself daily of your real purpose here?
7. Define your Mission and Execute Flawlessly Every Single Day
While it’s critical to have a guiding vision in life, you also need the force of courage, the rhythm of discipline, and the power of talent to bring your life purpose to completion. For this, you need to define your life mission — this is essentially a set of focused activities performed on a regular cadence that describes how you will express your core values as you approach the fulfillment of your vision.
So what activities will you consistently do as you work towards your future vision? Will you take a new risk every day? Perhaps do something that you prefer to avoid or postpone every day? Maybe simply something new every day? Will you try to tackle your fears by making some progress, no matter how small, on them every day? What and how will you learn so you can accelerate your journey? Will you make new connections regularly? Will you help someone daily? Will you live life every day like it were your last? Will you laugh for 30 minutes every day? Will you still smile when faced with adamantine walls of difficulty? Will you stretch yourself? Perhaps make those 1% daily improvements while you ready yourself for the giant leap across your personal chasm of the unknown. Will you introduce a sense of micro-adventure into your day — maybe buy groceries at 6 AM to skip the billing line, perhaps buy a new fruit, or try a new cuisine? Will you join the 5 o’clock club? Will you always be happy because it is in your nature to do so? Will you ever do anything you wouldn’t be proud to tell your mother? Just how will you approach your life’s purpose?
8. Live your Values and Stay Inspired with Core Personal Beliefs
Values are the principles that you will live by for your life, and personal beliefs are statements or quotes that you can use to inspire yourself along the journey. They tell the story of what you will do when no one is telling you what to do. For example, courage could be a core value for you. To express courage in life and inspire yourself to do so consistently, you can use supporting personal beliefs. One inspiring quote that comes to mind is a conversation from Apocalypto. When faced with existential danger, father Flint Sky tells his son Jaguar Paw — “Fear is a sickness… strike it from your heart.”
At work, you often find quotes on the walls of meeting rooms — these are the core personal beliefs of your organization. Do you know what your core personal beliefs are? Plaster these around your home and workspace. If you think that it feels like you live in a self-help book, simply change your perspective. Tell yourself that you are living in an inspirational space — one that you have carefully crafted to promote your life’s best possibilities. The meeting rooms also have names designed to help us quickly identify them. However, these rooms do not have a random name. There is almost always a specific theme. At my workplace, the meeting rooms are named after constellations because they want us as a team and company to reach for nothing short of the stars. These might seem trivial on the surface, but they function as subliminal messages that get registered in our minds and quietly influence how we think and act.
While having an awareness of your core values and personal beliefs is excellent, the key to using them for your success comes down to regular introspection. Ask yourself every year, perhaps on new year’s eve, if your values and personal beliefs are still enabling your life? Maybe they have served you well for the last 30 years, but will they continue to support the experiences you seek in the future? Your current mental structure might have to give way to a new structure for what lies ahead. People usually change their core values and personal beliefs only at the brink — when life has completely stopped working out for them. Only when people are completely convinced that their old ways of thinking no longer work are they open to making efforts for change. Don’t bring yourself to that brink. Instead, introspect regularly and let go of old values and belief structures that no longer serve you. Embrace change and new ways of thinking. Else life has its not-so-gentle way of forcing that transformation on you. Choose wisely.
9. Challenge Limiting Beliefs and Confront Sabotaging Fears
Each one of us has our own lingering doubts, limiting beliefs, unchallenged assumptions, and sabotaging fears that keep us from truly expressing who we are meant to be. Perhaps, someone shut us down in our formative years when we tried to express life more fully. Maybe a string of defeats in recent times has sown the seeds of doubt, uncertainty, and fear in the garden of our mind. These seeds will quickly grow into weeds that will continue to limit us until we can find the force of courage and strength of will to confront, challenge and uproot them. So are you ready to transform yourself and be the leader who will inspire others to greatness? Or will you be overcome by imagined limitations and play small with your life?
Look at the observer in the image above who’s standing at the edge of the rugged precipice. Imagine this to be you and for the precipice to represent everything that is holding you back, some of which might have truly grown larger than life. Is this precipice the dominant voice in your life? Are you going to look down at the deep ravine and hesitate? Or are you going to see the life-altering opportunity that awaits when you leap across the massive chasm of the unknown? Are you ready to spread your arms and dare to fly to the success that life so desperately wants you to have?
Now look down at the water. There’s a subtle and profound message in the stream that flows quietly below as it flinches ever so slightly while brushing across the rugged edges of the precipice. It simply continues resolutely downstream, carving its way as it moves forward to its end, merging with the mighty ocean. The lesson here is to be like water. You can overcome your personal precipice only if you are as unflinching as the stream and resolute in determination in the face of repeated failure. And only that sustenance will lead you to the mighty ocean, which is the fulfillment of all of your life’s possibilities. So the message is clearer than it could ever be. So what will you do today? It’s time for action. It’s time to do, dare, and dream. It’s time to fly. The best time to start this may have come and gone, but the second-best time is now.
10. Reflect and Rethink Life
Have you really reflected on your life? If you had the opportunity to speak to the world, what insights might you have to share? If you could get anything you wanted and never had to work for a living, what would satiate your soul? If you had 60 seconds left to live, what would you do? Why not do that consistently throughout your life if that is the thing that matters most to you in your final moments?
Speak to people around you who are in the twilight of their lives. Ask them to share one key lesson life has taught them, which they wish they had known a lot earlier in life. The top regrets I have heard is that people didn’t spend enough time with their family or break bread with their loved ones. Some focused so much on their career that their children don’t even know them. Some really wanted to do something else with their life, maybe become an artist instead of an attorney, but didn’t have the courage to follow through. Some didn’t express their love and regret that they didn’t even try. You can see a key pattern emerge here. People tend to have common regrets in the twilight of their life — and it’s not about what they did but what they didn’t do.
Reflect on what’s working and not working in your life. Don’t hope that things will get fixed by themselves or over time. You would be simply deluding yourself. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will change until you do something about it. So be ready to do your part to fix the situation. Self-awareness, deep reflection, and frequent re-alignment should be mantras that you use to rejuvenate your mind and renew your life daily. It also helps immensely to keep a journal and record your thoughts, observations, and insights for the day. Keep a pen and pocket notebook with you at all times so you can record ideas and insights when they strike your mind. If you don’t have a book, then grab a post-it or a paper napkin and write it down so you won’t forget it! You won’t believe how many ideas I’ve lost because I got them and wasn’t carrying my pocket notebook or pen that day. If you think you can type away or record your thoughts on your phone, it means that you haven’t discovered the magic of putting pen on paper. The intentionality, commitment, and transformational magic that comes with penning your thoughts can never be replicated on the digital medium. Try and find out for yourself.
In addition to self-introspection, be open and seek honest feedback from people you admire on how you can elevate yourself to the next level in your journey. An excellent approach to trigger candid conversation is to ask them what you should start, stop, and continue doing. Know that feedback is a gift and use it to your advantage. Almost immediately after you receive this gift, define at least one specific action you will take consistently to move the needle in that regard.
Finally, remember to enjoy the simple joys of life — a walk in the park, feeling the breeze in your hair, bathing in the summer sun, playing with your children, spending time with your life partner, and simply living life every moment. Life is transient and ever-changing. No one knows for sure what tomorrow holds, and nothing lasts forever. So make the best of the present moment and live each moment as if it were your last.
Breathe. Renew. Recharge. Go live a life that’s worth living.
I hope I’ve been of service to you — my best wishes for a warm and fulfilling life ahead.
