The Languages of Leadership summary

Being a leader these days is hard.

Our organizations are complex. Our attention is pulled in a dozen different directions at once. And the people we work with can be scattered all around the world. Problems can arise at the drop of a hat.

When they do, it can be tempting for a leader to blame his employees, or his organization. Everything would be fine if only people did their jobs, if only the boss would make her mind up, if only the organization was structured better.

But in blaming others, we’re making a mistake. There is only one thing we can freely change and improve: ourselves.

The key message here is: The only way to improve leadership skills is by focusing on ourselves, not others.

It all starts by caring, or taking things more personally. If we don’t take things personally, we can grow detached from our work, lose our motivation, and even make unethical decisions.

The trick is not to take work so personally that we bite off more than we can chew and burn out. It’s a balancing act. And here’s how to tackle it.

In The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey introduces the key concepts of the circle of concern and the circle of influence.

The circle of concern includes all those things that concern you but you have no control over. Included in this circle are your co-workers. The circle of influence, on the other hand, focuses on everything you can actually do something about. Things you can directly improve. To take things personally, in the right way, you need to focus on the things in this circle.

For example, imagine you work in accounting. You’re great with numbers, you deal with them all day long. But you have a problem dealing with people. You worry about your lack of interpersonal skills. So you avoid going out of your comfort zone and stick to numbers rather than people. Now, if you were to take things more personally, you’d realize that improving your people skills is important and worthwhile. What’s more, you’d notice that this is something in your circle of influence. It’s something you can control yourself.

You could make an effort to socialize more. Instead of responding to every question by email, get up and meet your coworkers face to face. Or you could volunteer for projects that include working as part of a team. Just by working on this one thing, your circle of influence grows.