The “How To Do Leader” Leadership Template
What Do Leaders Do???
Upwardly mobile club professionals hunger to become The Leader—to Make Things Happen, to get The Money, to wear The Badge, to glory in The Cheers and to park in The Big Cheese Parking Spot.
Those “Who Hunger To Be Leader” will read the books, take the courses, pass the tests and talk The Leadership Talk to all their friends, their peers and their leadership coach.
And those “Who Hunger To Be Leader” often become The Leader and DO leadership really, really well.
But explaining LEADER to those who want to BE leader is lots tougher than doing leader. Those-Who-Are-And-Want-To-Explain give examples—Ghandi, Patton, Churchill. They wax poetic about heroic moments that were captured in books, at the movies and on You Tube.
When it comes time to tell the Search Committee, the Compensation Committee, the Board, the Senior Staff and the Head Busboy what every day, in-the-trenches leaders DO, simply and clearly, leaders who are truly leaders are often at a loss to explain how leaders do leader. Lots of gobbly gook gets tossed on the table, lots of how-to-be-a-leader books get recommended, lots of consultant babble gets repeated and lots of stammering and stuttering is experienced.
BUT a clear and simple How-To-Do-Leader checklist is conspicuous by its absence.
A quick and dirty, simple to use, paint-by-the-numbers template’s needed for learning, doing, evaluating and explaining LEADERSHIP.
The Leadership Checklist
A step-by-step Leadership Checklist is a must-have tool for anyone wanting to learn, do and teach LEADERSHIP. Consider this template………..
- Identify—The Why: Leaders have a personal WHY (For Example—to meet and engage with interesting people) and a professional WHY (For Example—to create relationships, build community and to efficiently deliver the goods, services and programs needed to create relationships and community). Effective Leaders have found alignment between their personal WHY’s and a given club’s wants, needs and expectations.
- Document—The “Good Club” Checklist: Those who lead clubs have a list of The Goods needed to deliver Good Club. The template includes hardware (aesthetics, facilities, programs, etc.etc.etc.) and software (knowing names, humor, waves, greetings, smiles, etc.etc.etc.) and each of these “things” and “behaviors” are S.M.A.R.T.—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time related!
- Conduct—The “Here” Audit: Leaders then use their Template of “The Good Club” to audit where the club’s at Right Now. The audit is done without emotion, without saying what’s right or wrong. Simply—what is.
- Identify—-The “There” Benchmarks: Leaders have, for each of the items on their “Good Club” checklist, the ideal they’re looking for, the “there” they want to achieve, the benchmark they’ll use for doing that thing right. This shows what needs doing to translate the “Here” audit into the “There” ideal.
- Assemble—The “Who’s Needed”: Once leaders have found The Right Club Culture for their personal Why, after they’ve created their Good Club checklist, once they’ve audited The Now and determined The There, they’ll need The Right People to translate vision into action. Want to deliver Big Happy to the members? Leaders hire happy employees. Want to deliver “stuff” efficiently? Leaders find people who are motivated and capable of learning. Getting from “here” to “there” requires having the right people with the right qualities needed to do The “Good Club” Template—right.
- Create—The “How To / Must Do” Checklist: Once the leader has identified what’s needed and has the team in place to do it, they create a comprehensive checklist detailing what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, who needs to do it and when it needs doing. The checklist is the roadmap to make “what’s needed” happen.
- Energize—Using The Lubricants of Leadership: And lastly leaders need the intangibles, the lubricants of leadership—energy (The BUZZ!), confidence, command presence, relationship skills (interesting, engaging, stimulating), a track record of success, ability to communicate (verbal, written, body language, virtual) and a shout-it-out BELIEF in The Mission, in The Why, in The People and in The Culture.
All of the tactics, behaviors and skills needed to do leader right are embedded in this Leadership Template.
Make Leadership Happen
Leadership is complicated. Tough to do. Tougher to explain. The How-to-Do-Leader Checklist is a must-have tool for those who wanna-be or currently are—The Leader.
Score yourself using The Checklist. Do you have “Why” alignment? Have you created the “Good Club” Template? Have you conducted the “Here” audit? Have you established the “There” benchmarks? Have you identified the “Who’s Needed”? Have you created the “How To” checklist? Do you exhibit the “Lubricants” of leadership? Are you doing leader—right???
Identify your strengths—and your weaknesses.
Use The Checklist to improve YOU as The Leader—systematically.
Start doing, teaching and explaining leadership—better.
And enjoy the journey……………………
