Leadership coach and former Navy SEAL Jeff Boss says that many of his clients ask for a 60-day or 90-day plan to improve their leadership effectiveness. “It’s not that plans aren’t valuable”, he writes in Forbes, “[but] I can’t think of any mission in the SEALs that actually went according to plan.”
Better than planning is preparedness — and to that end, Boss notes the top three things that effective leaders show up with every day.
1. Questions: Effective leaders use questions to help themselves learn and to help others learn. They’re also smart about what to ask. “This means they listen fully before conjuring up a question rather than planning what question to ask as people are talking.”
2. Open Ears: Other people have questions too. A good leader is receptive to the queries and concerns of others, noting them down and following up.
3. Humility: “Humility opens the door to learning. It also allows you to defer to the person with the greatest subject matter expertise and context about the problem, so it gets solved in the best way possible.”
Do you show up at work with questions, open ears and humility? What are your other “show up” factors for effective leadership?
