The Leadership Legacy

Will Your Leadership Leave a Legacy?
What tools will help your team reach their full potential?

Third in the series:
The Leadership Legacy—The 12 Ingredients of the Leadership Recipe

By Ron Yudd

We explored in our last article the three C’s of leadership. We discovered that the path to effective leadership at all levels of an organization begins with these three C’s---communication, coaching, and celebration. We took pause to wonder about how effective the organization would be if all information was freely shared, everyone was coached in the fundamentals and exceptional performances were celebrated. We concluded that it would be the perfect environment for a leadership legacy to take hold and flourish. 

After the three C’s are firmly in place, the leader can then begin to prepare the recipe for creating other successful leaders in their organization. This recipe has twelve ingredients, that when mixed together and slowly simmered will produce a tantalizing, appealing, effective and inspirational leader.

Let’s take a look at the ingredients of this recipe. Pretend for a moment that you are the nurturing executive chef and you will be reviewing this recipe first to prepare for yourself and then more importantly prepare for those that you are developing into future leaders.

The first ingredient is Vision. A vision is the picture you paint of yourself and you operation. It is the picture of exactly what you want to be and exactly what you want your operation to be. The effective leader lives their vision, it is always there for all to see and follow.

The second ingredient of our recipe is Authenticity. This simply means that the leader is genuine—they are themselves. Just like the old Coca-Cola line---they’re the “real thing”. They are honest with themselves and genuine with others. They first hold themselves accountable and then others. 

The next ingredient is Passion for Service. Having a passion for service is all about giving of oneself to another---sharing your gifts with other people. It simply means that you fill the role of “servant leader” for your people. You give of yourself not just to the guest but to those that work for you also. The “take home” concept on passion for service is that people are much happier and more productive when they are sharing and giving their talents. Give your talents away and encourage other to do the same. This will create an atmosphere where a passion for service can grow.

Courage is our next leadership ingredient. Courage means that you may be afraid but you take action anyway. It means you have the guts to make a decision and not be afraid of the consequences. It involves believing in yourself to the extent that you are not afraid to make that decision, even if it isn’t the most popular decision. Great leaders can survive making mistakes because they make decisions with conviction, sincerity and with all the facts they can gather. They have the courage to act when it is easier not to.

Selflessness is the next item on our list of ingredients. Selflessness means that you deflect praise away from yourself making sure that others receive it. Selflessness is when you don’t worry about who gets the credit. The selfless leader let’s their accomplishments speak for themselves.

Next it’s Share the Power. This concept involves destroying the “get the manager policies” in the operation. This means that you allow your team to share in both the privilege and the responsibility of making decisions. The more opportunity we give our employees to make decisions on their own they more they own a piece of the success of the business. Create parameters for your employees to work within and then let them loose to perform their best. Share the power of running a successful club with all those that work there.

Next it’s time to add Give to Get. We get better at what we do when we teach someone else how to do it. This is just like a having passion for service but it specifically involves giving away your skills and talents to others through teaching.

The reward for using this technique is that you actually get better at the particular skill you are teaching because you are describing, demonstrating and practicing it with others. Thus, the concept of “give to get”.

The next ingredient is Building Relationships. The concept of building relationships is based on the premise of what you bring to the relationship not what you take away. What do you provide or give to the other person rather that what you extract from that person? Successful relationships should be based on what is shared not what is taken away.

Mix in at this point a little Hands on Leadership. This ingredient is all about actually getting things done. Leadership is defined as taking responsibility to get something done. How we go about actually getting things done? All of the following come into play--goal setting, planning, prioritizing, problem solving and organization. These are the hands on skills for taking a hold of a situation and working to get the job accomplished.

The next addition to the recipe is Providing Hope For Others. You are the person that has to create a safe environment for your team and provide the hope that they can succeed----- that they can pull just about anything off. Providing hope means reminding others that they can make a difference and that they count in the organization.

The next ingredient is to Be a Lifelong Learner. This is the concept of the leader as an ever growing individual that always promotes the growth of others. Being a lifelong learner means that you look at things with fresh eyes---childlike eyes, and always be inquisitive like a small child. Look at things in wonder and encourage others on your team to do the same. This creates the fun of learning different techniques and news ways of getting things done.

The last ingredient to our famous leadership recipe is Perseverance. Simply put this means----- don’t dare ever quit. It means hanging in when things get rough. It means never quitting on yourself and not quitting on others. Remember to quit is easy, to stick things out is to inspire.

Leaving a legacy of leadership means to teach and encourage at all levels of your organization. Gather the ingredients, choose the right tools, combine with care and this recipe will become your guide for creating something that you, your members and all your associates will rave about. Enjoy!