On Leadership: Building Credibility

True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.

~ John Gardner

Left untended, knowledge and skill, like all assets, depreciate in value – surprisingly quickly.

~ David Maister

Executives are like professional athletes.  They must continually perform at a high level or they will not have the opportunity to be in the game very long.   Similar to professional athletes, executives must consistently improve their capabilities in order to stay relevant and effective.

In the book, The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey teaches about the various dimensions of executive capabilities.  He uses the acronym TASKS to help us remember the specific elements:

Talents – our natural gifts and strengths.

Attitudes – our paradigms – our ways of seeing, as well as our ways of being.

Skills – our proficiencies, the things we can do well.

Knowledge – our learning, insight, understanding and awareness.

Style – our unique approach and personality.

Mr. Covey explains that these are all parts of what we call our capabilities.  They are our means to produce results.

As an executive, your job is to generate sustainable results.  You do this through leadership and management capabilities.  Do you work at improving your capabilities?  Is it a conscious effort, like a professional athlete, or do you just kind of learn things as you go along?

My purpose is to inspire greatness through axiom leadership.  Axiom leaders operate from a base of fixed principles and truths rather than making up the rules as they go along.  Learning the principles and truths for leadership and management as well as improving the rest of your TASKS capabilities will help you achieve the expected results.

I recommend Mr. Covey’s book as a great resource to improve your knowledge and understanding on capabilities and the broader topic of trust.

Choose to inspire trust.  Choose greatness.

~ SLE