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The Lenses of Leadership
Once again this past year, I had the privilege of hearing Bill Hybels speak at the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit. This time, he talked about the four leadership lenses and the important role they play in leading your team “from here to there” (Bill loves to use this metaphor). The following are my takeaways:
- Passion Lens — Find and fill your passion bucket. Are you excited about the future and where you’re going? Is your dream as big as ever? How full is your passion bucket? Here are a couple of suggestions of things you can do to fill the bucket: Hang around or meet passionate people/leaders, and read books written by or about passionate leaders.
- People Lens — How are you doing with your team? Bill said if there’s a high level of trust among team members, there will be high levels of performance. Editorial comment: I talk about this subject frequently in my blogs, so I’ll only say that there’s a lot of value in his strong suggestion to have an outside firm measure your team’s “health.”
- Performance Lens — Bill’s main point here was that it makes a real difference when you have clear, achievable goals for your team members, and it’s important to let them know how they’re doing. They want to know and they deserve to know. He also recommended using a color-coded system that many of you are already aware of, which he labels as follows: Green — Thriving; Yellow — Healthy; Red — Underperforming.
- Legacy Lens — What is your legacy? What will people say about you when you’re gone? If you perceive that it’s not what you want, then do something about it and make some course corrections.
You may want to reflect on this list and set a few personal/business goals.
Bill closed by saying, “Leadership matters and we should never stop getting better!”