Leadership is about vison, seeing into the future. It is about passion, having drive, having an end goal and determination to move forward. It is navigating adversity. It is empowering others to rise above their fears and to move forward. Someone said to me once; "Try first helping another person up before you help them out." It is about bringing the best out of those around you.
As you will read below, sometimes helping a person up also means letting them go on their terms instead of yours. Of course letting someone go on your terms is difficult but does it have to be contentions or a suprise? I was once let go by a supervisor who sat down with me, expressed his concerns and allowed me to express mine. We came to a mutual agreement that it was time for me to leave and I did so with no hard feelings or regrets. We both acted with respect and kindness. In this case there was no WIN-WIN as sometimes it can't be avoided. Nevertheless we both demonstrated leadership. It was some months later but he called me back to do some contract work for a couple of months. Had I acted with malice or anger that call would have never come.
Early on in my career I was working as an IT Director and had hired a good personal friend. I encouraged him to move from San Diego CA to Salem NH, over 3000 miles from home. After a short while things were not going well and I felt my only option was to fire him and end a friendship. With some advise from our HR director and an angreed upon plan the friend and I worked together to bring his performance where it needed to be. Today I am very honored to say he is still a very good friend and went on to be an IT Director for another company. I have always believed in the idea of WIN-WIN. This was the first time I was able to put it into practice.
More recently I worked with a young man who was just getting started in coding. For this job I needed someone who knew enough to know what was expected but didn't demand a high salary. For the next year and a half he progressed from knowing the very basics of SQL to knowing a bit about mySQL and a lot about SQL Server. By the time he left he was not only creating his own stored procedures and functions, but was proficient in PHP, CSS, JavaScript and Bootstrap. He had become a qualified and competent full stack developer. In hiring him I knew the company could not pay him much more than he was making and as a result I expected he would (and did) find a better paying job with his new found skills. Again a WIN-WIN as he filled a big gap for me and learned skills to take his career to new and more profitable heights.
Today I lead a team of 8 novice developers and report writers. As I work to coach and train them they are learning Node.js, React, how to build API's and to extend their knowledge of SQL and JSON data.
While searching through quotes the undeniable theme was people, the human element, the part within each of us that drives innovation and change. Leadership is about finding this drive within yourself and within others.