Mark Twain once wrote, “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
As a leader, I would say, “The two most important days in your life as a leader are the day you realize you are a leader, and the day you define your leadership philosophy.”
A leadership philosophy is a set of values and beliefs that govern what you do, how you do it, and why. Thoughts become things, and what you think in your mind and believe about yourself and how the world works defines how you act.
Taking time to intentionally define your leadership philosophy - what you do, how you do it, and why - can make you a more effective and consistent leader.
The most impactful leadership moment I have had in my life was learning how to define my leadership philosophy and why it is important.
When I was a 27-year-old junior high teacher, I had the opportunity to interview for an assistant principal position at a local elementary school. While I was excited about the opportunity, I was going from leading students to leading adults, and I was being asked to do so at a level at which I had never taught, and I would be leading adults much older than me and with much more experience than I had.
The night before the interview, my leader, principal, and mentor at the time pulled me into his office and asked the two questions that changed my journey as a leader. He first asked me, “What is your philosophy of education?” and then, “What is your philosophy of leadership?” I had no idea what he meant, and I immediately felt defeated.
I thought to myself, “How could I be an effective leader if I didn’t know the answer to these two, simple questions?”
He told me to not stress because the answers to those questions aren’t as easy as they might seem. He told me his philosophy of education was that any student could learn in the right environment, and his philosophy of leadership was that we in education are in the people-development business, so our job was to grow and develop people; not throw them away.
That made sense to me. I could work with that.
He told me, “Reggie, you can lead people, but there will be questions in the interview that you won’t be able to answer, and that is okay; just tie everything back to your leadership philosophy.” He then said, “WHEN you get the job, you will come across new things every day and you won’t always have the answers. If you have a good leadership philosophy, you can be confident and consistent in your decision-making process, even when facing new challenges.
When you don’t have a solid leadership foundation, inconsistency can be a barrier to success. Great leaders are agile but consistent. Great leaders can adapt quickly, but they have a solid foundation that guides what they do. Having a solid leadership philosophy allows you to do just that.
WHO OR WHAT HAS IMPACTED YOUR LEADERSHIP JOURNEY?
Defining your leadership philosophy is an engaging activity that requires self-reflection. So much of who we are is based on our experiences and the leaders (good and bad) that we have been around.
The first reflection question that I would ask is, “Who has been your biggest influence when it comes to leadership?” or, “What is a defining leadership moment in your life?”
My moment was the story I shared above when I learned about the importance and value of having a clearly defined leadership philosophy. Our experiences shape our present and future, so leaning on, learning from, and leveraging them helps us intentionally design our future.
WHAT KIND OF LEADER ARE YOU?
Our second reflection question is based around the word WHAT - What kind of leader are you, and what kind of culture or environment are you trying to create through your leadership?
I have been a coach, a teacher, a principal, a director in a school district, and now a learning and leadership development manager, and each time I change jobs, my WHAT changes.
As a youth, middle school, and high school basketball coach, my what was:
I want to win between 66% and 75% of my games…
I learned early on that if we win too much, the competition isn’t strong enough to push us, but if we don’t win enough, my athletes lose their confidence and their parents aren’t happy and hopeful enough to allow me to coach. The sweet spot for me was winning 2-3 games or tournaments in a row, consistently. This helped us get appropriately pushed by our competition, but not pushed too hard that we wanted to quit.
As a teacher, my WHAT was:
I want my students to master the learning process…
I taught math, so every year, I had parents tell me how much their students hated math because of how bad they were at it. Early in my teaching career, I tried to get my students to fall in love with math, but I wasn’t having enough success explaining how they might use something like the Pythagorean theorem in real life. What I did have success in doing was getting them to realize that learning is a lifelong skill that will help them no matter what they do, and so mastering the learning process by taking what I’m teaching you about the Pythagorean theorem and being able to apply it would be beneficial and worth their time.
When I went from being a teacher to a principal, my WHAT shifted to:
I want to create the best experience for people…
As a principal, you are in charge of taking care of over 1,000 students, teachers, and their parents, and in the process of teaching and growing them, I want them to have the best experience while on my campus.
When I transitioned from 1,000 students and teachers at the campus level to 20,000 people at the district level as a DEI director and director of HR, my WHAT shifted to:
I want to create a space where people can do their best work…
As a leader of leaders, this is where I still live. I work with and for some amazing people, so I want to help create spaces where they can do their thing, and where they feel seen, heard, appreciated, and valued.
Take some time to think deeply about what kind of environment you want to create. One way of doing this is thinking about what you hope the people you lead today will say about you when you aren’t around in the future.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU WANT TO DO?
Our 3rd question is, “How are you going to do what you say you want to do?”
We all have a leadership superpower, a leadership style that puts us in the best position to be successful.
My leadership superpower is my ability to build, sustain, repair, and leverage relationships. I learned very early in my leadership journey that I was not going to be successful using power tools like intimidation and consequences, and that my strength was getting to know people, learning what motivates and inspires them, and then leveraging our relationship to help them build positive habits so that they can reach their goals.
I attached this how, my ability to leverage relationships to solve problems, drive performance, and grow people, to the end of each of my what in my leadership philosophy:
I want to create a space where people can do their best work… so I leverage relationships to solve problems, drive performance, and grow people.
FranklinCovey is a world leader in leadership training and consulting. In a recent article, they said there are 5 types of strategic goals that can help your team perform better. They are:
1 - Process-improvement goals
2 - Time-management goals
3 - Team-dynamic goals
4 - Development goals
5 - Competitive-knowledge goals
Having knowledge of expertise in one of these areas is a leadership superpower that could be used in your leadership philosophy:
… I develop systems and processes to increase productivity and alignment.… I help people better manage their time to increase productivity and efficiency.
… I build cohesive teams to increase performance, culture, and job satisfaction.
… I use goal-setting to help people grow, develop, and achieve key milestones.
… I leverage my knowledge and experience to drive performance and grow the people around me.
We are a PEOPLE FIRST, SERVICE-FOCUSED team and organization, so we have to be intentional in putting people and relationships at the center of every interaction, but just as we need culture-builders and people with soft skills to bring people and teams together, we need data-driven, process-driven, and goal-driven people as well to help us blow our goals and expectations out of the water.
Now, take some time to think not only about WHAT you do, but HOW you do it when you are at your best.
WHY I DO WHAT I DO
Simon Sinek is a British-born American author and inspirational speaker. He is the author of five books, including Start With Why. In a Ted Talk with more than 60 million views, Simon says, “There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority, but those who lead inspire us. Whether they are individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for ourselves. It's those who start with why who have the ability to inspire those around them.”
Comedian Michael Jr. once said on stage, “When you know your why, your what becomes more impactful because you are walking towards or in your purpose.”
I found my why when I was about 10 years old. I grew up in Dallas, TX, a big city with a lot to do, but my grandparents lived in a small East Texas town called Marshall, and there was not much to do during the summer when we would go visit them. My grandpa learned how to play tennis so that we could have an activity to do together, and one day when we were leaving the tennis court, he started picking up all the trash.
I said to him, “Grandpa, that trash was already here before we got here.”
He said, “Reggie, our job is to leave every place a little better and cleaner than how we found it.”
I didn’t realize until decades later after watching the Simon Sinek and Michael Slaughter videos, but that was my WHY. The reason why I work hard to create spaces where people can do their best work by leveraging relationships to solve problems, drive performance, and grow people is so that I can leave every person and team better than I found it. My goal in any and every situation is to bring and add value however I can.
Your WHY is the final piece to your definition of philosophy. When you know your why, your what, and your how becomes more impactful.
NEXT STEPS
1 - Write out your leadership philosophy. Being intentional in thinking about, defining, and writing your leadership philosophy on paper is a valuable first step toward being the most effective leader that you can be. This foundational practice will help you consistently make decisions as you lead the people around you.
2 - Share it with the people who report to you and the people you report to. Communication is one of the barriers or competitive advantages for teams. The teams who can effectively communicate who they are, what they do, and where they are going outperform their competition, so this is a low-risk opportunity to grow the level of communication with your teammates.
3 - Continue to reflect on it and refine it. As we grow, learn, and gain new experiences, our leadership philosophy might change too. Learning is a lifelong process, and each step changes our philosophy and how we lead more and more. Boxing great Muhammad Ali once said, “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” Continue to learn, grow, and get better.
Additional Resources:
A printable PDF: What | How | Why - Defining Your Leadership Philosophy
Simon Sinek Ted Talk: Start With Why
Michael Jr. Short Video: Know Your Why
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