Do you believe that great leaders are born – or do you think they’re made?
According to Joe Britto, Outback’s lead coach and consultant, this question actually misses the point of leadership entirely.
In a recent Outback Talks: The Employee Engagement Podcast episode, our team sat down with Joe to discuss what it takes to be an effective leader in business. In the episode, Joe explains why great leadership isn’t a quality that you’re born with or a skill that you can learn…
…It’s a mindset.
In this article, you can discover how a shockingly simple thing like your outlook can help you go from being an average manager to a great leader. You can also tune into our latest podcast episode of “Outback Team Building & Training Tips” to hear directly from Joe on:
“There’s something about the experiences that we’ve gone through in life that eventually create what I call a leadership mindset…The argument ‘Are leaders born or are they made?’ misses the point, and the thing that sits underneath all of that is the mindset.— Joe Britto (Lead Facilitator, Outback Team Building & Training)
A leadership mindset is a different way of looking at the world. It’s a certain perspective that’s developed based on a person’s experiences.
These experiences – whether they’re from a person’s childhood or a leadership course they took last year – help shape a way of thinking that can enable us to become better leaders.
Contrary to what many people may think, Joe Britto suggests that becoming a better leader is not actually about you.
He encourages managers to look outside of themselves and shift their perspective from “What can I do better?” to “How can I help my team succeed?”
“The measure of our success as a leader is less about how many people follow me, or how many people I can get to do the things that I want them to do,” explains Joe, “and more about how many leaders am I creating.”
To achieve a leadership mindset, Joe recommends:
The biggest difference between a good leader and poor one, according to Joe, is a flexibility of mind. He describes this as people’s ability to change course on a project or task in order to accommodate a bigger, better idea.
Joe believes that the greatest mistake someone in a leadership role can make is not using their team’s brainpower. Specifically, this can happen when managers ignore employees’ feedback or try to contain people’s ideas.
Want to help your management team become more effective leaders? Bring in a professional team coach and management consultant like Joe Britto to help you tackle your business challenges head on.
Get a free consultation to discuss which session would be right for your team.
“Thank you for a great four days. With your guidance, our team was able to see that we could work differently as an organization. What were our “management meetings” are now our Leadership Meetings. Your perspective was so valuable in getting us to this level of working.— Access Group
Don’t forget, you can also tune into Joe’s interview above, or download the episode by subscribing to our podcast, Outback Talks: The Employee Engagement Podcast, on iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.