Boundaries for Leaders (Enhanced Edition): Results, Relationships, and Being Ridiculously In Charge

A sense of being in control changes people’s brains and affects their performance big time.

The law is this: the higher you go in leadership, the fewer external forces act upon you and dictate your focus, energy, and direction. Instead you set the terms of engagement and direct your own path, with only the reality of results to push against you.

The process of doing this, individually and collectively, builds up working memory and creates those positive, action-oriented behaviors that lead to better results, new products, new partnerships, new customers, and a lot more fun.

the number one thing a team has to do: work together to accomplish a result that none of them could do alone. That is a team.

Focus your people on what they have control of that directly affects the desired outcomes of the organization.

that means it is probably transferable. Leadership demands that you move it down the organizational tree. If there is a known path of the work, and it is repetitive, it can probably be taught. And if someone else can be taught to do it, it might be time to delegate that work, so that you can get back to doing what only you can do: lead.

The job of the leader is to form that team around a common purpose or goal, and then work with the team to figure out what that team is going to have to value and behave like to reach that goal. When that is done, a leader has created what is needed, and not allowed what will prevent the purpose or goal from becoming reality.

Social psychology research has shown that when people assign a specific time and place for completion of specific tasks and goals, their chances of success increase by up to 300 percent.

He would encourage his staff to ask questions of the person telling the story, as would he: