What Successful Leaders Do Behind The Scene

There are things we need to do without the team but for the good of the team

What are the things that happen behind the scene of every great leader? If you know them, master them and repeat them, you will have the same result or even better result in leadership. What I want to share with you in this article may not be absolute but I guarantee you that they are the bedrock you need to be a successful leader.

Every team should have a goal. Although the goal might keep shifting immediately you achieve it but at least you always have a destination. That means you are on a journey to success. The degree of the success of your team is proportionate to the right approach to your destination.

Arriving at your destination is determined by the kind of choices you make, not the kind of chance that happens along the road.

When a leader depends on chance or luck, it is already an indication of a lack of strategy or the roadmap to get to their destination. We don’t get to our destination by chance but by choice. This will remove the cheap covering that some people use to shield themselves away from taking responsibility for their outcome. Therefore, the idea of fate (the force that predetermines events) is unorthodoxy and a cheap way to excuse failure. A leader must not be caught with it. The destination of your team should not be a result of mere admiration of a model or else you will be lost.

We don’t get to our destination by chance but by choice

Here are 4 things that happen behind the scene of a successful leader:

1. They know their niche: Don’t be deceived by sugar-coated talk that says you can succeed in anything. You might be able to do all things but you can’t be the best in all things. Over the years my experience in leadership has exposed to me that definitions and descriptions of success are relative. This article is for a selected few that believes in global success.

There is a niche for you and your team to be successful. You must know that niche by yourself before you even begin to gather your team. And when I talk of knowing your niche, I’m not talking about a rough idea of what you think you might want to do if there is an opportunity. Now look at these words/phrase; “rough idea, think, might, if.” They all depict uncertainty.

You might be able to do all things but you can’t be the best in all things

I was born in the western part of Nigeria, and my Dad did a bit of farming when I was a young boy. When I see the market prices of some of the things we eat from our farm produce, I’m amazed. However, there is one product I see in the market that I don’t see in our farm, it is apple.

I would have loved to eat free apples from the farm too but it can’t be grown in Nigeria because of the degree of temperature needed to nurture it. It will cost lots of energy, resources, and years to get that done if possible. The same way it is for a leader that is out of his niche. You can’t be successful in everything, find your niche before you find your team.

2. They constantly fight distractions: It is not every leader that reveal this part to their team, but constantly a leader fights distraction on the road to their destination. The team members in the van of vision might not know this but a leader sometimes see good roads that other travellers are passing and he is so tempted to follow that route, only that it might increase the hours of their journey or they might never even get to their destination.

Nobody gets to their destination without a fight against distraction. The universe doesn’t serve success to you on a platter of gold; you have to fight for it. It is now a question of knowing what kind of fight. If you don’t know you are in a fight, there is a high probability that you will be knocked out before you know it. That is why as a leader it is good you know before you get on that road that there will be fighting against distractions.

Nobody gets to their destination without a fight against distraction

This is how it happens; when your resources start increasing, especially money and quality relationships, and you begin to feel invisible. Like Clark Kent, you are tempted to dive into something different that you don’t know about. It is always a fight. A fight you must make sure you win because it can destroy the good things you’ve built already.

Some months ago, my friend and I were in a car, driving to a place for the first time. We were using the navigation system and when we got to the junction, we saw a particular road that is smoother and lots of cars were using that road but our navigator was directing us off the road. My friend prevailed over me that we should ignore the navigator and follow the smoother road. In shorts, we spent extra 2hours to get to our destination that day. That was an example of a fight of distraction that we lost. As a leader don’t take your team through such an awful experience.

3. They are resolute: Another thing you want to do is to be tenacious in your journey. There will be different things like bad roads, traffic gridlock, deflating tyre on the road that will slow you down. I believe this is when the true strength of a leader is tested. And if you give up at the slightest appearance of any of these things then maybe you were not worth leading the team in the first place.

Things like policy change, economic change, contact loss, pandemic disruption are bound to happen but that shouldn’t change anything about your destination. Your strategy might change but the commitment to your goal should stand.

Your strategy might change because of unforeseen circumstances but your commitment to your goal should never change

Your team draws strength from you. And you cannot fake tenacity; you either have it or you don’t. One thing that can help you is to focus on your destination. When the thought of your destination takes over your mind, you will never back down because of a temporary delay.

Don’t be too quick to make a permanent decision because of a temporary challenge

4. They lead in such a way that after their handover, they are still leading. Most people make a mistake when they retire. They retire without a strategy to keep leading and they go into extinction. For instance, a footballer that played so well in his younger days retired at age 37 and wants to go home to keep up with the latest TV shows with his family will go into extinction so fast that it may be difficult to remember he once had a good career.

Successful leaders build in such a way that they leave their footprint on the surface of the earth even when they are dead. Make sure you don’t plateau after a phase. Make sure your experience, your expertise is transferrable. Publish books, open a school where your ideologies and strategies are converted into a curriculum and taught, become a coach in your field. I expanded on this point in my article on “Top 3 secrets of a timeless leader.”

Successful leaders build in such a way that they leave their footprint on the surface of the earth even when they are dead

You don’t need teamwork to practice these things. If you practice them, you will experience a quality change in the way you lead.

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