Great Leaders

It’s important for us to know what makes a great leader, so that we can focus on the right things, in order to achieve such greatness.

I found an excellent quote, whilst reading an article on sports coaching, which I think applies equally as well to great leadership.

“A great leader, is just a good leader who has a great team, with whom he has an excellent relationship”.

I think it’s important for leaders to realise that the greatness comes more from the greatness of the team and the relationship, rather than just from the leaders themselves.

As a leader it would be nice to think that we are the source of the greatness, but that’s just vanity.

A leader without a great team, or without an excellent relationship with his team, will struggle to achieve greatness, as a leader cannot do everything themselves.

It’s true that we may help our teams achieve greatness, but they always had the potential, we just helped them realise it.

So in truth, they were great team in the waiting.

We also need to ensure that we have an excellent relationship with our great teams, otherwise we will struggle to help them achieve their full potential.

Sporting history is littered with examples of great teams who had poor relationship with their managers, and consequently struggled.

Certainly both the French and Dutch football teams have suffered from this in recent years.

Great relationships are based on trust and respect.

As leaders we need to trust and respect our teams, and we must also look to foster the same trust and respect in ourselves from our teams.

If we can do that then we have the basis for an excellent relationship.