The leadership role of every CEO 2

Continued Form Last Week

Leadership is about Teamwork
Business is a team sport and only the teams with the best players can win. To build a winning team requires a leader that not only wins but also knows how to lead a pack of winners and make winners out of losers. Winners being who they are don’t naturally like to hang around losers even though that loser bears the title of a CEO.
That you now occupy a leadership position as a result of your CEO title doesn’t necessarily mean you are a leader. Being a leader is much more than occupying a position.

As I pointed out last week in the first article in this series, positions or titles doesn’t make you; functions and duties do. As a CEO in your role as a leader, the bulk of your work is mainly people-centered. Your functions and duties (responsibilities) majorly revolve around working with people and leading them. And when it comes to people, knowing ‘what’ to do alone won’t do the trick. People are not things. They don’t care how much you know and can do until they know how much you care and make them feel. Therefore, knowing ‘what’ to do is only one part of the story, knowing ‘who’ to become in order to do what needs to be done is the main story. The real challenge here is gathering the right kind of people to work with as a team, for only the right kind of people can be truly effective –capable of doing the right things. You see the right people are very rare to find or attract because they only submit to the right kind of leadership. They are not predominantly motivated by how much they are paid; they are mainly motivated by passion and will only follow the right leader whose vision, goal or objective they consider worthy of their commitment and loyalty. You cannot out rightly buy them over; you earn their commitment and loyalty. Figuring how to be the right kind of leader is your main responsibility as a CEO. So here’s the big question; “Are you the kind of leader the RIGHT kind of people will like to follow?”

The Right Kind of Leader
Making an organization effective – capable of doing the RIGHT things – is the work of a CEO as a leader. But for an organization to be truly effective, everyone within the organization, including you the CEO as the leader must be effective – capable of doing the RIGHT things. You are not exempted from the equation just because you are occupying the highest position. In fact, and this is the most critical factor about your leadership role as a CEO, until you the leader is effective, don’t expect anyone else to be effective. In other words, you must first become the right kind of leader (effective) before gathering the right kind of people (team) and putting each in the right seat (position) all working collectively in the right direction (vision, goal or objective) for the benefit of the entire organization. You are the missing piece of the puzzle. Without an effective leader, no organization can be effective. So here is what the complete equation will look like with you the leader inside;
‘right LEADER + right PEOPLE + right POSITIONS + right ACTIONS = EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATION’.

Tito Philips Jnr. is a young Nigerian that is M.A.D – Making A Difference.