Gary Allison's Leadership Blog

These thoughts represent my leadership dogma, built from personal experience, readings, and character traits I admire in other leaders.

• Leadership is Personal not Positional – leadership first starts within. Being in a position of authority no more makes someone a leader than putting them behind the wheel of a formula-1 car makes them a race car driver. Leaders are found throughout a company as well as life.
• “When given command, take command” General Norman Schwartzkopf . When put in position of authority, you must rise to the occasion. There is no place for the timid or weak of will.
• Leaders are meant to serve – being a leader should not be primarily for personal gain, but rather to serve those you lead. Think of a pyrimid flipped upside down. The more people you lead, the more people you serve. When I look to hire a manager, it is a leader with the personal skills to serve their people that is top of the list. Serving can come in many forms – it should not conjure up connotations of weakness, but rather strength that comes from working hard to help the team succeed. There is a great book on the concept of Servant Leadership.
• Set and keep and eye on a vision – more than almost anything else, people look to leaders to show them the way. Leaders need to have a clear vision of where the team needs to go, and then tenaciously steer the ship through a thousand minor course corrections toward that destination.
• The Team – leaders build teams from groups of people. Teams pull together in a coordinated effort to achieve a goal. Effective teams develop leadership at all levels and a peer to peer accountability for results. They work hard together, laugh together, pull together.