Being a Good Boss

I have worked for some pretty good bosses over the years, several of whom saw enough potential in me to invest close-in coaching on behaviors and beliefs needed to be a good leader. The people working for me today benefit from their insight as I’ve created my own leadership job-aid that influences my decisions and their work life more than they might imagine. I remind myself everyday that great leaders serve the people who work for them and affirm that:

1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me. I ask those who know for feedback.
2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or breakthrough ideas or methods.
3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins that enable my people to make a little progress every day. I'm inclusive and seek wins for everyone.
4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not assertive enough. I need to work on this one; I err on the side of being too easy.
5. My job is to serve as a human shield, to protect my people from external intrusions, distractions, and idiocy of every stripe — and to avoid imposing my own idiocy on them as well. We are a well-oiled machine.
6. I strive to be confident enough to convince people that I am in charge, but humble enough to realize that I am often going to be wrong.
7. I aim to fight as if I am right, and listen as if I am wrong — and to teach my people to do the same thing.
8. One of the best tests of my leadership — and my organization — is "what happens after people make a mistake?"
9. Innovation is crucial to every team and organization. So my job is to encourage my people to generate and test all kinds of new ideas. But it is also my job to help them kill off all the bad ideas we generate, and most of the good ideas, too.
10. Bad is stronger than good. It is more important to eliminate the negative than to accentuate the positive.
11. How I do things is as important as what I do.
12. Because I wield power over others, I am at great risk of acting like an insensitive jerk — and not realizing it.