Understand when you’re supposed to be the guide/advisor and when you’re supposed to be someone going along for the ride.
If it’s the former, you need to take charge. Provide more input and make suggestions as the guide. You still don’t want to do everything for the other person (they want to be the hero of their own story), but with your help, they can get where they want to go.
If you’re just tagging along, read the situation and minimize your input. Here, the other person wants to be the primary decision-maker. Be there to support them and to listen to them, but don’t try to be the white knight and solve all of their problems. They want to feel listened to.
Look around you and figure out what successful people have done in order to set themselves up to achieve that level of success. Tease out the similarities in what many successful people are doing to get them there. Their individual tactics may be slightly different, but I can almost guarantee that they have a similar mindset or strategy.
What did they do to achieve success that other successful people have also done? Correlation does not equal causation, but if you continue to see the same patterns over and over, you can at least increase your odds of achieving success. Look for the clues to lead you there. Listen for them. Then act on them.
You should always strive to have a mentor and be a mentor. Doing this will allow you to understand that a) you don’t know everything and b) you have a lot of knowledge to pass along to ease the path of someone else. Having a mentor should keep you humble, yet being a mentor can help to boost your confidence. It should put you in a mindset to learn and a mindset to teach. It should let you give in addition to receiving.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s illustration of the difference between being a “boss” and being a leader.
You can be a natural leader, where you inspire others to do their best and help the team reach its goals, without being in a leadership position. You can lead with quiet confidence or be outgoing. There are many styles of leadership, and some styles work better depending on the circumstances. For example, you can have a great wartime leader, but in times of peace, that person’s words or actions may not resonate with those whom they are leading. Or you can have a terrific peacetime leader, but when times get tough, their voices may be too soft to motivate others to believe in the cause.
Regardless of the type of leader you are (or you follow), the best leaders typically find ways to help you grow. They don’t do the work for you, but they help by asking you the right questions and letting you find your way.
Bosses, on the other hand, can be leaders or they can be tyrants. Bosses can still get things done over threat of power or anger, but they don’t win any loyalty from their subordinates. In fact, instead of people going above and beyond, they will often only do the bare minimum for a boss. Other than the intrinsically motivated optimist, why should anyone bust their butt for someone who is always the first to blame others when things go wrong, who takes credit when things go right, and who doesn’t treat their employees with respect?
If you are fortunate enough to be promoted, make sure you work to be the best leader you can be and don’t just be another “boss.”
How do we grow or learn? By consuming (taking information in from others), by doing (performing a task ourselves), and by teaching (helping others learn). Try to practice all three as often as you can.
