Leadership
By Bill Sweetenham
In all walks of life, great success in all fields of endeavour is achieved by people who are outstanding
in their application and commitment to excellence. The question is always asked – “Is extraordinary
and exceptional success derived from desperate and obsessive attitude, commitment and dedication
or is it achieved with repeatable excellence by extraordinary and exceptional people?” Is it an
extraordinary and exceptional one-off achievement or is it a far greater attitude and state of mind
from people who lead extraordinary and exceptional lives? Creative and innovative leadership will
challenge and investigate opportunities and the winning point of difference for those who aspire to
these high standards. Compromise can be considered the cancer of achievement where sustainable
and repeatable extraordinary and exceptional high performance attitudes, processes and outcomes
are the required objectives.
The challenge of creative and innovative leadership is one that is sought after by all major
corporations, sporting organizations and teams of individuals who seek and pursue visionary
advantages to provide a winning edge against the performance of their international competition
and domestic opposition. Major companies and teams are challenged not only with cutting edge
technology but with creative and innovative thinking, team building and leadership. In all of the
great teams, an individual approach is required to invest in people and a creative and innovative
approach to building invincible teams where corporate athletes and sporting entrepreneurs provide
winning opportunities. Innovation and creation are aspects and strategies that many talk about but
very few have the ability to consistently and successfully apply with leadership on an hourly, daily
and weekly basis in their personal and working lives. Performance in advance of popularity, and
reality ahead of hope with the successful application of all aspects is vital to achieve a market/client
winning edge and advantage of team and individual performance.
Leadership is providing direction and opportunity in all situations and ensuring success for average
people and talent to achieve greatness beyond their capabilities because of your influence and
presence. Stand-out leadership comes from highly energised individuals who have the ability to
make all stakeholders and clients feel valued, appreciated and special, whilst addressing a change in
culture and/or planning. They can harmoniously apply these same principles in adversity and
prosper where leadership under pressure is required. They efficiently make accurate decisions under
pressure.
Whilst leadership in all its aspects of vision, creativity and innovation can include great management
and organization skills within the person, this would be considered extremely rare. Great leaders
understand their areas of strength and continue to grow in these areas, whilst recruiting those who
can deliver great management, organization and logistics and other support services at their similar
leadership levels to provide harmonious inclusion in achieving the vision. Whilst superior leadership
is an ability to make and deliver winning decisions, it also embraces consensus, consultation and
strategic negotiations.
Great leaders have an ability to set direction, to define and position a strong and vivid picture of
what the future should look like and ultimately be. This clear nature of vision and leadership is
critical in terms of where it is pushing the boundaries of the organization to achieve but also in terms
of the personal growth and connection of its stakeholders, clients and staff and their
uncompromising desire to buy in to the concept, get behind it, take ownership and unconditionally
drive it forward.
An ability and track record of translating vision into action and promoting this buy in and
commitment at all levels is a winning element of their direction and is recognisable in great leaders.
It has been my view and practice that outstanding leaders take personal ownership for proactively
defining this vivid and real vision for their teams, and this is clearly articulated and delivered to the
organization’s harmonious aspirations to go forward. Leadership in an individual provides a true
motivation to generously leave their mark on an organization and relish the opportunity to deliver an
inspiring point of winning difference ahead of all competition as a personal legacy.
Great leaders surround themselves with only the best but good people. Personally, I value my
opportunities for leadership in the situations, events and competitions where my intervention has
created success and winning in a “can’t win” situation. My influence caused individuals and teams to
perform above their own potential in adversity and under pressure.
On the negative side, I can now recognise all those who displayed to me negative leadership and
included are those who brought their personal computers into meetings, used their mobile phone
during meetings, conducted meetings with more than 6 discussion points, went longer than an hour
and a half and formed committees. It has been my experience that the great leaders are people who
empower other people, lead them and do not respect any of the negative attributes mentioned
within this paragraph.
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