Understanding Place As A Leader

One of the best things about life is that we are all human.

It is also one of the most difficult aspects of life.

This fact of life tells us a few things.

We all have different Places we are in life.

We all have different Goals, Desires, and Motivations in life.

From the Leadership perspective, this can either be your greatest Weakness, or most powerful Strength.

It is also important to understand these both from a personal perspective, as well as a Team and/or Organizational perspective.

From the personal perspective, you need to know what your Place is.

Many people will try to tell you where your Place should be.

Most of them will be wrong.

Only one person can determine where you should be - You.

We do need to be realistic about it as well.

Our Place right now doesn't always have to be our Place.

However, we need to understand and Succeed in our current Place if we hope to Grow to the Place we want to be.

Or perhaps you are exactly where you want to be, and you love the Place you currently are.

You may have people tell you that you need to go further, but you don't have to if this is where you want to be.

It is alright to have simple Goals, Desires, and Motivations in life.

It is alright to have grand Goals, Desires, and Motivations in life.

As long as they are what you want.

We can then expand this into Teams and Organizations.

Every person on your Team and in your Organization is also an individual.

Every single one of them have their own Goals, Desires, and Motivations in life.

You may believe you know where their Place should be, but you must be wary of assuming.

What you believe may not be what they believe.

You may want someone to go to the top, but they are perfectly happy where they are.

If you push them, they will resent you and push back harder.

You may believe that someone doesn't "have it", but they want it more than anyone realizes.

If you don't work with them, they may become your worst nightmare - either externally at your largest competitor, or internally through Active Disengagement.

When you are looking at the people in your Team or Organization, you need to understand both current Place, as well as the Place where People want to get to.

You need to understand the Goals for their lives.

You need to understand what Desires they have.

You must figure out what Motivates them.

Seeing these different things will also help you as a Leader further define your own Place within a Team, and how Place may shift going into the Future.

It is also important to understand that Place changes over time.

Our Place today will not be the same as tomorrow, nor any other day in the Past or the Future.

Place is always changing and evolving based on what occurs in our lives.

Someone may believe that they are in the perfect Place today, and desire no change.

Maybe in 9 months they have a child, and it changes their entire perspective on life, leading to the desire for a new Place.

They want to make sure that their child never feels like they will be for want.

They push and push to get to higher levels of Success.

Perhaps in 5 years after that, a parent passes away.

They think about all the time they wish that they had with their parent, and how they don't want their child.

They now desire a different Place, with different Goals and Motivations.

This is the way of life.

When you understand your Place within the changing tides, and the Places of others as well, that is when you can put the pieces together of Success as a Leader.