Someone recently said to me that the goal of being a leader was to train people to be at least as good as yourself. Well with all due respect (and I do have a high level of respect for that person), I disagree. If that is "the" goal then it implies leadership is based on a persons capabilities/skills in a particular field. However I suspect the General of an army is not the best sniper, tank driver, unarmed combatant, etc. Nor is the CEO of a bank the best financial expert. Nor (ideally) is the prime minister/president of a country the best policy maker, politician, orator.
So why are these people the leaders? Well simply put because they are the best "leaders" ie I believe leadership is a skill/gifting in and of itself. Therefore in any organisation the role of a leader is different to the roles of those being led.
So what is the goal of a leader? To draw out the best in the people being led to achieve a particular goal/vision. A general's role is to make his soldiers into better soldiers, in whatever field, to win a battle or a war. A CEO of a corporation aims to produce experts who can provide strong growth (financial or otherwise). A head of government draws the best policies out of their executive to improve their nation. A head master develops the best educators who in turn produce the best students. And so on ... you get the idea.
If we take on this view of leadership then we understand that the role of a leader is to serve those whom they lead. The leader is to develop/draw the best from their followers who in turn will deliver the results to achieve the vision. Once we understand the why of leadership, then we can better work on the how-to of leadership (and there are a multitude of books, experts, opinions on the subject).
One final thought: everyone follows someone and everyone leads someone - at the very least we should be leading our own lives. Most of us will also have families, friends, work colleagues that we also lead in some aspect. We should be aware that our role is to serve these people, to draw the very best out of them that we can.
12 November 2010
21 September 2010
Reading Resolution 2
An update on my reading resolution - there are 2 more books to add to the list:
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Relativity by Albert Einstein
Given that it's month 9 and I've only completed 5 books it may be a little hard to achieve my goal of a book a month for the year, although I do have about 3 books on the go right now so we'll see.
It's also somewhat misleading as I tend to read a lot but it's usually magazines, bibles, web articles, manuals, advertising, children's books (for my kids ... well maybe for me too) etc.
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Relativity by Albert Einstein
Given that it's month 9 and I've only completed 5 books it may be a little hard to achieve my goal of a book a month for the year, although I do have about 3 books on the go right now so we'll see.
It's also somewhat misleading as I tend to read a lot but it's usually magazines, bibles, web articles, manuals, advertising, children's books (for my kids ... well maybe for me too) etc.
13 September 2010
Tardiness
OK, so this is a bit of a rant about something that really annoys me. If you are going to make an appointment with me or arrange to meet me or basically say "be here at this time" then don't be late!
If you are late then you are stealing my time. If you are meeting with a group of people and you are late, then you are stealing time from all of them.
Now I realise that there are valid reasons for being late ... life happens. However when it is something within your control then you are making a value judgement that whatever it is that "prevents" you from being on time is more important than those with whom you are meeting.
A simple of rule of thumb I use: time is money (in reality it's worth a lot more) so assume you are paying everyone with whom you are meeting eg I'm meeting with 12 people, I'm going to be 5 minutes late therefore I should be willing to pay 12x5min = 1 hour of their time. I generally use $150/hour as the benchmark (mainly because of my profession). So the big question is: Is the reason I'm going to be 5 minutes late worth $150? Sometimes it is but it's not often when it has a monetary cost associated with it.
So if you are late, aside from genuine unforeseeable problems, then be willing to pay the price of my (and other people's) time.
If you are late then you are stealing my time. If you are meeting with a group of people and you are late, then you are stealing time from all of them.
Now I realise that there are valid reasons for being late ... life happens. However when it is something within your control then you are making a value judgement that whatever it is that "prevents" you from being on time is more important than those with whom you are meeting.
A simple of rule of thumb I use: time is money (in reality it's worth a lot more) so assume you are paying everyone with whom you are meeting eg I'm meeting with 12 people, I'm going to be 5 minutes late therefore I should be willing to pay 12x5min = 1 hour of their time. I generally use $150/hour as the benchmark (mainly because of my profession). So the big question is: Is the reason I'm going to be 5 minutes late worth $150? Sometimes it is but it's not often when it has a monetary cost associated with it.
So if you are late, aside from genuine unforeseeable problems, then be willing to pay the price of my (and other people's) time.
08 September 2010
Installing git on a CentOS server with WHM/cPanel
Recently I had the need to install git on a CentOS server. It was not a trivial process by any means but after a lot of googling we finally had a win. The steps I took were:
1. Configure EPEL repository for use by yum:
2. Install git using yum:
However I encountered a dependency problem with perl-Git. It seemed that no matter what I did I could not "find" this package using yum. After a lot of searching I came across the following blog post:
http://www.cmdln.org/2010/05/07/install-git-on-centos-cpanel-server/
Essentially cpanel configures yum to exclude perl updates to protect it's own packages. Thankfully there is a one-time work-around to disable the excludes for a particular repo so the following command worked for my git install:
Win!
1. Configure EPEL repository for use by yum:
rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
2. Install git using yum:
yum install git
However I encountered a dependency problem with perl-Git. It seemed that no matter what I did I could not "find" this package using yum. After a lot of searching I came across the following blog post:
http://www.cmdln.org/2010/05/07/install-git-on-centos-cpanel-server/
Essentially cpanel configures yum to exclude perl updates to protect it's own packages. Thankfully there is a one-time work-around to disable the excludes for a particular repo so the following command worked for my git install:
yum --disableexcludes=main install git
Win!
26 May 2010
Cousin Definitions
Last night I went out for dinner with my wife, eldest daughter, my parents, my cousin and wife (they were visiting from NZ), his son and girlfriend and their daughter. Needless to say we had a great night. However the discussion at some point inevitably turned to everyone trying to define the relationships between us - and with more than a little confusion. So after a bit of research (thank you wikipedia) I've finally found out that:
1. the degree eg first, second, third etc is the one less than the minimum number of generations from either cousin and the nearest common ancestor;
2. the remove is the number of generations separating the cousins.
So based on those 2 rules, some of the relationships at dinner were:
1. Me and my cousins son are first cousins once removed;
2. My daughter and my cousin are first cousins once removed;
3. My daughter and my cousins son are second cousins;
I doubt that this will be the most life-changing information, but at least at the next dinner I have with my cousins and family I'll be able to define our relationships!
1. the degree eg first, second, third etc is the one less than the minimum number of generations from either cousin and the nearest common ancestor;
2. the remove is the number of generations separating the cousins.
So based on those 2 rules, some of the relationships at dinner were:
1. Me and my cousins son are first cousins once removed;
2. My daughter and my cousin are first cousins once removed;
3. My daughter and my cousins son are second cousins;
I doubt that this will be the most life-changing information, but at least at the next dinner I have with my cousins and family I'll be able to define our relationships!
09 May 2010
Reading Resolution
I quite enjoy reading and own a large number of books on a wide range of subjects. However many of those books remain unread because I never seem to have time. So this year I made a resolution to read a book a month. It's now May (4 months gone) and I've completed 3 books so I'm currently slightly behind. The books are:
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott
Incandescence by Greg Egan
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Hopefully I can write a review of those books at a later date.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A Abbott
Incandescence by Greg Egan
The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Hopefully I can write a review of those books at a later date.
03 May 2010
The start of my blog
Well I've decided to jump on the blogging bandwagon and start my own blog. I'm doing this more out of interest about what I will end up writing. So here begins the journey.
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