Catch 22 – The egoless, present and curious leader

Every successful implementation of Lean or Agile I have seen has an ingredient that is almost a contradiction.

A leader who

  • has low ego (not interested in putting himself first)
  • is present (he/she has active conversations with teams and other leaders such, as change never comes as a complete surprise)
  • is active (he takes part in building up teams, do not defer hard decisions, he notifies and challenges, using questions, when people behave differently from the values agreed)
  • curious (what is the next step, what should we try, let’s do it)

This is a contradiction in terms. But every great leader I have observed have had as their final goal to eventually remove themselves. A scary thought? In fact not so. All these leaders had plenitude of options to choose from for their next position.  And improvement is never done. There is always a next step.

/mts

One response on “Catch 22 – The egoless, present and curious leader

  1. Could not agree with this statement more:

    “But every great leader I have observed have had as their final goal to eventually remove themselves”

    I have a policy that it is the duty of all employees to render themselves obsolete. As I am fond of saying “The person who makes themselves obsolete will never want for a job”

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