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A Monster Of A Leadership Challenge: The Creature That Ate Your Career
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Word count: 815
Summary: All leaders experience fear, failure and self-doubt
many times throughout their careers. The author combines the
three into one creature he calls Ghidora. Ghidora is the name of
the three-headed movie monster that engaged Godzilla in a
titanic struggle. You're not a Godzilla, of course, but you can
go a long way in defeating this beast through tips provided
here.
A Monster Of A Leadership Challenge: The Creature That Ate Your
Career by Brent Filson
In the 1964 movie, "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster", King
Ghidorah was a gigantic, dragon-like creature that came from
outer space. It had three heads on long necks, bat-like wings,
no arms, and twin tails. It terrorized Tokyo until Godzilla, in
a role reversal as protector rather than destroyer, defeated it
in a terrible battle and chased it back into outer space.
As a leader, you don't have to go to the movies to face
Ghidorah. You do it every day. Ghidorah is the three-headed
monster of fear, failure, and self-doubt. How you deal with the
triple threat will determine to a great extent how your career
develops.
Though fear, failure and self-doubt are each separate, they
cannot be separated: The prospect of failure can lead to fear of
failure, and fear of failure can lead to self-doubt, which
closes the cycle by leading back to fear of failure.
Of course, this is not strictly linear. Three-headed Ghidorah is
comprised of any number of combinations. For instance,
self-doubt may lead to failure or failure may lead to
self-doubt, which leads to fear.
Don't concern yourself with the combinations that can afflict
you. Concern yourself instead with how to deal with Ghidorah.
The first thing to understand about how to deal with the monster
is that if you're NOT dealing with Ghidorah, you're doing
something wrong. Leadership is not about living an easy life for
ourselves but a hard life for other people and for the
organizations you serve. Fear, failure, and self doubt are a
natural outcomes of good leadership.
That's especially so for leaders who are trying to motivate
people to meet extraordinary challenges.
You'll never know how good you are as a leader unless you are
motivating others to be better than they think they are. In that
endeavor, you'll inevitably get at least some of the people
angry.
Most people are settled into a comfortable status quo and resist
and resent being challenged to break out.
But if you aim to get great results, people not only have to be
pushed but more importantly, they must be challenged to push
themselves.
So, if you're not getting some people angry with you over the
pushing, you're doing something wrong as a leader, you're not
challenging people enough.
The second thing is that if you face Ghidorah head on, you'll
find that fear, failure and self-doubt are your benefactors; for
Ghidorah can be your partner in achieving limitless results.
For instance, I worked with the CEO of a company that proved
results are limitless. In the 1930s, the company was making tea
bag paper. Over the years, they kept changing and improving
their products so today they are making high tech
thermoplastics. Going from making tea bag paper to high tech
thermoplastics involved innovation, hard work, and great
leadership. My bet is that fear, failure and self-doubt were
driving factors in that three-generation, results-are-limitless
evolution.
Don't simply overcome Ghidorah. Instead, use Ghidorah -- use
fear, failure and self-doubt as your results-partner. To do so,
you need to cultivate your inner, submerged strengths.
An assault by Ghidorah is an opportunity for us to manifest
strengths we did not know we possessed.
"I'm afraid I might fail." - We can manifest perseverance.
"I doubt if I can do this." -- We can be innovative.
"I have failed." -- We can evince patience, tenacity, and
resilience.
My leadership processes, which today may look simple, clear, and
robust, were developed with my grappling countless times with
Ghidorah. There is not a process I teach that did not have its
birth in a failure of one kind or another. Often, I really
didn't understand the process until I first failed in trying to
put it into action. I have to give Ghidorah much of the credit
for their success.
Over time, as we keep manifesting our strengths in the face of
Ghidorah's assaults, we tend to avoid getting carried away by
appearances or our mercurial desires but instead will gradually
actualize a centered leadership. The more we assess our
strengths in times of affliction, the more easily assessable
those strengths become.
But that's not all. Here's the final secret: We manifest these
strengths not just for ourselves but also for the people we
lead; for when we face Ghidorah, we show others the path; and in
doing so, help them tap into their own inner strengths, creating
a motivational bond between you..
King Ghidorah was brought to life on the movie screen by a stunt
actor inside an elaborate costume, with a team of puppeteers
controlling the beast's many appendages. When tough challenges
call forth Ghidorah in your leadership, you may see that the
creature is, similarly, not substance but the dazzle of our
minds and emotions, reminding us that leadership begins not when
we grasp at outward appearances but when hold to our center and
the resources flowing from that center.
2006 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
About the author:
The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE
LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO
GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He has been helping leaders of top
companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free
leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: "49 Ways To Turn
Action Into Results," at ht
Brent Filson
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