What About Personality?

I was asked these questions this morning. “What about the personality of the leader? Doesn’t that affect the leadership act? Doesn’t the personality effect how the leader behaves?” The answer to these questions is absolutely. Personality does effect the leadership act and the behavior of the leader. The personality does not go away.

Legacy Leaders understand that the people they are tasked with leading have a variety of personalities and behavior patters. Those personalities and behavior patterns will, very likely, be different from those of the leader. If the the leader simply says, this is who I am and all you followers will have to just get with the program, follower-ship will be diminished and this does not help the leader achieve the outcomes that are desired. The Legacy Leader gets the notion that it is incumbent upon leaders to modify their behaviors to help the team move forward. If the door is locked, don’t try to break it down before you at least make an honest effort to find the key.

The Legacy Leader has the ability and skill to speak the many languages spoken by the followers. They also have the ability to understand followers’ motivations and drives. Legacy Leaders use their knowledge, understanding and ability to speak to their followers in ways that they will understand and know what to do and how to do it. When we say that Legacy Leaders lead based on values and principles not on personality, we are not saying that their personalities cannot exist. What we are saying is that Legacy Leaders do not use their personalities as a club to beat their followers into submission.

Becoming a Legacy Leader is not easy. It does not happen over night. Legacy Leaders will not be perfect and will not be guaranteed that they will not make mistakes. You never arrive at the Legacy Leadership summit; you are always in the process of becoming. It is not a destination, it is the journey. The more we learn about people, the greater our understanding will be and the more capable we will become. We learn new stuff about the human being and the state of being human every day and this new knowledge helps us get better and better and better.