Leadership Skills

“You can lead a horse to water...but you can't make him drink.”

“When something unfortunate happens, you have three choices:

You can let it define you.

You can let it destroy you.

You can let it strengthen you!”

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.

For the past few years, the Hamilton Tiger Cats has been in a ‘rebuilding mode’ to prepare the team to become a competitor for the Canadian Football League’s Grey Cup.  Last year they eked through to compete, losing to the western competitor.

In the Words of Tiger-Cats Head Coach, Kent Austin:

Leadership is something you can learn.  Some people are more natural at it, but everyone can lead. Doesn't have anything to do with your title, rank, hierarchy.  It's a condition of your heart, a product of what you are, rather than where you are. You have to renew the way that you think, to value something at a deep level.  You are not transformed by your heart first...you're transformed by the way you think!

I didn't really learn any of these things I believe in terms of leadership until later in my playing career as a pro.  Early on, I was too self-absorbed.  Should have had better balance between my individual goals and the  team goals.  When you strip it all away, Leadership is nothing more than the ability to influence.  You can be confident, but if you are incompetent, it doesn't matter. If you lack the ability to articulate that competence in a way that influences those around you, you won't be successful either.

What players want to know is:

Can you help them to become the best player possible

in a way that they know that's it's about them...and not about you as a coach?

I believe in the servant leadership model.  I believe you demonstrate leadership by first serving and modelling what it is you are asking someone else to do.  If you are not willing to do that, then you cannot earn their trust. As a player, I was always a perfectionist...and that's not always good. It has to be tempered properly with an understanding of both your strengths and weaknesses. The players around you need to have a general sense that you're going to get it done...that you're going to do what it takes so that everyone can be successful.

The most important thing is the philosophical viewpoint that we believe in (not just talk about)  that has to be 100 % authentic;  it has to be demonstrated on a consistent basis...in word and deed...by our coaches every day. Be reasonable about expectations from other people.

Colin Powell stated:

Leadership is solving problems. 

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems,

is the day you have stopped leading them.

They have either lost confidence that you can help...

or concluded you do not care.

Either case, is a failed leadership.

Learn to Lead by Example

written by Derek Doyle to the Hamilton Spectator

Be a Good Communicator, a Good Listener...and Others will Follow!

Leadership often appears to embrace contradictory perceptions.  Is the leader a boss or a servant?  Effective leadership can mean ruling the world...or perhaps destroying it.  How can a leader be a visionary and direct change while being responsive at the same time?  How does a leader find the proper balance between being a good communicator and a good listener? 

As a realtor, my responsibility is to lead my clients to success. If I could pick one key principle I have found to be effective, it would be that a leader must be and  must do what they want to see in their team/organization, etc.  Therefore,  one must lead by example.  Only then, will you influence others to follow. Being surrounded by leaders and  learning from their experiences, disappointments, failures and successes has been an eduction is itself. Through these discussions, I have learned that maturing as a leader has no final destination.  That's what keeps it so challenging, rewarding and fresh.

Words of Wisdom

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.

(Orison Swett Marden)

If your actions inspire others to...dream more...learn more...do more

and become more...You are a Leader.

(John Quincy Adams)

A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame...

and a little less than his share of the credit.

(Arnold H. Glascow)

Written by Merle Baird-Kerr...November 15, 2014

Comments are welcome...email to:

inezkate@gmail.com  or  mbairdkerr@cogeco.ca

Post Note:  On Sunday, November 23, in their own Tim Hortons Field, our team defeated the Montreal Alouettes  in a decisive 40-24 win, claiming the Eastern Division title…competing for the Grey Cup next Sunday in Vancouver’s B.C Place against the Calgary Stampeders (Western Division winner).  Of the capacity sell-out crowd, Kent Austin stated, “It. Was. Awesome!  We knew it would be…we knew the fans would show up…that they’d be loud and proud…and they did!”