Leadership Unlocks Potential
After six years as the CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina now focuses her time in the non-profit sector. At the Global Leadership Summit 2014, she talked about potential and leadership:
- What you are is God's gift to you. What you make of yourself is your gift to God.
- Everyone has more potential than any of us realize. Every organization has more potential than is ever tapped.
- Bureaucracy crushes potential. Rules-based, process-driven, hierarchical organizations. Don't make decision on your own, send it up to a higher leader. Bureaucracies forget who they are there to serve.
- The highest calling of leadership is to unlock the potential of others.
- Not everyone is a leader. Many people have a corner office or high-level title but they have never led successfully.
- Leadership is not management. A manager produces good results within constraints. Leadership is about changing the order of things.
- Leadership is not about the corner office, a great title, a big paycheck or the top position. Rather, it is about unlocking the potential of others regardless of your position.
- Sometimes a "reorganization" is an illusion of progress.
- What gets measured gets done.
- Culture can be defined by "what is it like to work around here?" and it all comes down to behavior.
- Does anyone on your leadership team exhibit behavior that you would not tolerate in a lower-level employee? If so, you have a culture problem.
- The 20/20 Rule: 20% of the people in any organization are change warriors -- they thrive on forward momentum and change. There are also 20% who are the "Hell No, I Won't Go!" group. They are done learning and don't want to move. They become the resistance. The final 60% are skeptical. They are waiting to see what happens. Change won't happen until the 60% are moved and engaged.
- True leadership requires faith. Faith gives us the gift of humility, servanthood, empathy, optimism, and faith in others.