Leader’s don’t serve a purpose, they serve those with a purpose.

The biggest mistake made by potentially wonderful leaders is that they forget their entire job revolves around following the needs of those they serve, those folks whom they are leading.  What is beneficial for a leader personally may not be beneficial for the entire organization.  A manager’s goal may be to increase efficiency and production which requires minimal work on half of the manager to implement the fantastic idea and provides a larger year-end bonus, but for the employees under the manager it may not be the best choice.  While the idea looked good on paper it has caused employee satisfaction to decrease, the intensity of the workload to increase, and the employees see no direct short term benefit for their extra work.  From the view of the employee the idea was horrible, but the manager sees it as lightening in the bottle because the manager has lost the view of those following him and cannot see the implementation for what it is; shit.

Benefits of being able to view your leadership as a follower include:

1. Being able to see an unbiased view of your ideas implemented.
2. Allow you to build a relationship with those you lead based on trust that you know what you are doing because you can relate to them.
3. Strengthen your bond with those you lead because they can empathize with you since you are on their level.
4. You will have more loyal followers because they will feel like you are working for their benefit, in their best interests.

Not being able to view your leadership as a follower can cause the following:

1. Distrust between you and those you lead because you are acting for your own benefit, not those of the group.
2. Create a hositle and unproductve work enviornment.
3. Cause anomosity twoards you by new workers due to group think (older workers will complain and warn newer group members not to trust you)
4. End of a job.  If your company or organization is facing trouble and an outside firm comes in to take over management the first thing they (generally) do is to fire the current management (leaders) because if they were doing their job properly they wouldn’t need to be there.

So how do you make sure that you have a follower view of your leadership?

1. Find a couple member to confide in who will tell you straight up if your ideas are beneficial or detremental.  Not everyone will be willing to do this, but these are the people you want in your corner.  You can’t grow if you don’t know what you don’t know.
2. Take the time to form personal relationships with each of those you lead so that they will feel more comfortable talking to you about how they feel the organization and your leadership is doing.
3. Provide an anonymous feedback system so that those who are not willing to talk to you directly can still let you know how they feel.
4. Learn how to recieve criticism with grace
5. Never directly call out someone who criticizes your leadership style or views.  If their opinion becomes an issue talk to them directly instead of risking the interruption of work place dynamics.

If you ever are doubting a decision and unsure of what to do think about what would benefit you if you were following someone else in the same situation.  When it comes down to it you are all members of the same group, you just have a different title.

There have been a lot of people talking about how ‘paying your dues’ is overrated, its turned into a hot topic of sorts for our generation.  I would like to offer a different view of this whole theory of paying your dues.  Maybe paying your dues to an organization is like rush week and pledging to a greek organization.

I do not like the term hazing, it has a stigma associated with it the moment you hear it.  Hazing is loosely defined as anything new members have to do which older members do not.  You don’t even need to be on campus to learn about alleged hazing activities greek organization use, turn on the TV, pop in Old School, or read the news.  I pledge to an organization my sophomore year of college and never did anything which I felt was harmful to myself physically or mentally, or did not want to do.  I have been in charge of rush week and I, along with my sisters, believe that if you want someone to join your organization there is no need to put them through hell and be mean to them.

The idea for many groups behind these ‘initiation’ activities is that it gives the new members an experience that they can only share with older members, it is bonding.  At alumni functions though I would talk to members who pledged in the 1980’s and hear what they went though, it was almost always followed up with something to the affect of, “You guys have it easy, you don’t know what it truly is like to earn your membership.”  They seem to have less respect for us because we did not have to display our desire to join in the manner which they did.

When I worked at an auto shop I use to do junk tires every Tuesday morning.  It involved two hours of throwing used tires down a shoot to have them loaded onto the junk tire truck.  I ended up doing this every Tuesday because every other entry level service technician refused to do it because it was two hours of base pay and they could make an extra thirty dollar on commission when I was up there.  The upper level technicians, many of whom had worked there over ten years, had more respect for me then the other level one technicians because I was willing to suck it up and pay my dues.

So when you start a new job and quickly by pass the ‘paying your dues’ phase maybe you are doing yourself a disservice because you are missing that equality with your coworkers leaving them feeling that you didn’t earn your position you were just entitled to it.  Just like the alumni don’t feel like we earned our membership because we didn’t go through the same circumstances they did.

In an attempt to justify my excel using issues I told the person who was helping me that I use Mac, he responded through his thick Romanian accent with, “I can tell; I use Linux”.

No matter how hard you try to control your personal brand you can’t control all aspects of it.  Two major things which influence how others think of you are who you surround yourself with and what you do with your free time.  You can control what you do and who you are around but you can’t control how others perceive those choices.

The People You Surround Yourself With
My grandfather frequently tells me “you can’t soar with the eagles if you hang out with the turkeys.” Guilt by association is not just a legal term anymore.  Everyone has experience this, be it at a bar trying to pick someone up until your friend embarrasses you or in school when you have an older sibling who wasn’t the best student and you end up with the same teacher as them. My friend Kristin and I, both straight, were walking around the MN Pride Festival together at a scrimmage for the Minneapolis mens Rugby team Mayhem and people assumed that we were dating because we were there together, just walking next to each other.

Dan Schwabel recently wrote a post about how your friends impact your personal brand also.

What you do with your free time
What is the first thing that comes into your mind when I mentioned Dungeons and Dragons, or Renaissance Fair?  Or, if you’re young enough, Magic.  Harry Potter also brings some stereotypical images to a lot of peoples minds.  I had a group of friends in high school who took a limo to the Harry Potter party and Barnes and Noble.  If someone only sees what you do in your free time, or that is all they have heard about you, they might think about you in a different light then you really are.  Kevin Rose plays D&D and he is nothing like my dad who was a pot head an use to play.

I played Rugby which is a sport synonymous with lesbians for many people.  Only three of our twenty-two players were gay, but mentioning that I play Rugby almost always prompted the follow up question of if I was straight.

Another long run stereotype is which operating system you use.

Mac users and PC users are two very common stereotypes.  I personally use both because SolidWorks does not run on the Mac OS, yet.  You can even learn how to ‘dress like a Mac’ emulating the fashion displayed by Justin Long in various Mac commercials.  PC magazine has fired back with articles blasting Mac’s commercials as desperate and insulting and The Register posted an article criticizing Mac’s ‘real people’ ad campaign claimed that they feature a “collection of life’s losers”.  Choosing an operating system based on any criteria you want, but you will automatically be drafted to the virtual war.  You could also opt out an use Linux.  Zamir, one of the smartest people I know, support Ubuntu.

I always laughed at the notion of time management.  For years I was the person who would still have no free time if the day was somehow extended to include 30 hours of daylight.  It all started when I was in high school, my senior year I worked two jobs, went to UW-Madison part time, and volunteered three days a week at the local elementary school helping teach kindergardeners.  When I started college I opted for a full load each semester and was holding officer positions in various organizations, I also lead the stereotypical greek college student life of parties and social events every night.  Half way through my junior year all of this caught up to me. Years of four hour nights, an overloaded social and academic life, and drinking frequently put me into the hospital with a non functioning liver and anxiety attacks.  I spent a month bed ridden, to weak to walk to class and to tired to stay awake.  I had to withdraw from almost all of my courses and quit my absolutely amazing job.  I use to laugh at the notion of time management because I felt that it was impossible to manage time when you had none; I was wrong.  No matter how productive an efficient we are our greatest asset is our health and you have to make time to take care of yourself.

Here are some simple steps to integrating time management into your schedule.

1. Design a schedule around non-negotiable events such as work or going to the gym.  I suggest making the gym non-negotiable so it is harder to create excuses not to go.
2. Use a pencil to write in negotiable events incase they move or need to be changed.
3. Do a time study to find out how much time it really takes you to do various things such as type up a memo or write a post.
4. Don’t be afraid to put blocks of free time in your schedule if possible.  If you have an all day meeting allow yourself some time to unwind and relax before starting the next activity.
5. Place your schedule in a location where you will see it frequently.  If you get off track it will help to see what you should be doing.
6. Review your schedule weekly.  If you haven’t been allotting yourself enough time revise it.  Your schedule should grow with you, not constrain you.

Creating a schedule is the first step in developing an efficient time management plan.