What Goes Wrong With Leadership And How To Fix It…Remembering

Every day many individuals in your organisation who are in responsible positions wake up and neglect to consciously remember that their first profession and duty is to be a leader and to lead. They neglect to continually remember the privilege of being in their position; how honoured and blessed they felt when it initially happened. They neglect to remember, in the spirit of gratitude, what and how they – and others – sacrificed for them to get there. They don’t remember all those valuable lessons learnt on expensive programs attended, books read or through hard experience. They get caught up in the busyness of life, daily activities and deadlines, survival, the pressure of needing to make decision after decision, hoping to match expectations of performance from various stakeholders. Some have always been, or in time – because they don’t remember – become consumed by selfish pursuits, forgetting why they initially embraced their position. Because of all this forgetting, leaders fall back to their old ways or become different persons entirely. They forget their best selves and allow busy schedules – more than ever – to hijack all those good intentions of being purposeful leaders. The results of not remembering are detrimental, destructive, even fatal on multiple levels – individual, family, team and organisational. 

We NEED leaders to REMEMBER. Please imagine what your organisation would be like if all your leaders remembered, daily. 

But let’s be honest. One of the biggest challenges in life is remembering remembering past life lessons, birthdays, anniversaries, commitments made of meetings and call backs, what we learnt on a course, during varsity years, who we are, why we fell in love back then and so on. The list of what we must and want to remember is endless. 

Most of us start a day, a week, a year, a relationship – personal or business partnership – with wonderful intentions, we even set goals for being and doing better. Yet so much of these fall away because we forget; life takes over; we do not make time to remember well enough the emotional feelings, desires or reasons that led us to deciding and committing. 

Of course leaders are no different. Their biggest challenge is remembering – forgetting to remember and helping others remember.

The same challenge exists in your organisation. You invest incalculable effort and huge amounts of money to unite around a strategy, a set of values, operational plans and budgets. Then you invest the same or more to communicate it, to make it relevant to individuals, hoping they will remember to align with the strategy and live those values daily during everyday engagements, spend what they committed to in their budgets.

Life is all about remembering, until what we remember becomes part of who we are, as a person, as an organisation or as a country. And even then we risk defaulting back to old ways, if we don’t remember, on another level. That’s the cycle of positive change – remember, become, remember on another level, become on another level…

Diaries are for remembering future appointments and activities. Journals are mostly for remembering the past – memories and lessons.  Contracts are for remembering agreements between parties.

ThinkLead is for remembering Leadership. It is an App, a Leadership Ecosystem for any electronic device, in order to be accessible at all times with helping leaders remember

  • Remember who they are
  • Remember that they are leaders
  • Remember to lead
  • Remember what leadership is
  • Remember what they have learnt about Leadership
  • Remember best practice 
  • Remember their commitments made to improve behaviour
  • Remember their leadership responsibilities 
  • Remember the company values, desired leadership competencies & strategy 
  • Remember to stay leadership fit
  • Remember. Remember. Remember.

Leaders remembering means everything to and for your organisation. At the least it means: 

  • All investments result in better return
  • Leaders allowing their best selves to surface because that’s what authentic leadership is
  • Leaders performing better because their best selves are at the forefront of their minds
  • More positive movement occurs
  • Happier people 
  • A healthy leadership oriented culture
  • Alignment and Unity
  • Individual, team and organisational achievement
  • Increased individual, team and organisational confidence 

Then, when success becomes a rhythm and confidence a natural consequence, you and your leaders need to remember what brought you here; remember to be confident but not arrogant; remember to keep improving. Remember. Remember. Remember, on another level.

The time has come for society, organisations, teams and individuals to REMEMBER leadership, Authentic Leadership, on a whole new level. Society and your organisation cannot afford the “forgetting” any longer.

So what went wrong with leadership and leadership training? We stopped remembering. What is the solution? Start remembering.

When you think leadership, remember ThinkLead. And when you implement ThinkLead you and your leaders will remember leadership in order to Think (remember) & Lead on a whole new level, then continue remembering, even long after you and other key leaders have moved on.

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Leadership Platform is a specialist leadership development consultancy, focusing on creating measurable impact to the bottom line through the enhancement of leadership understanding and engagement.

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