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At a certain point in your career, you will likely get promoted into a leadership position. Aside from that, if you decide to start your own business you’ll be required to take on a leadership role in your company by default. Once you become a leader, you will need to take responsibility for a lot of things and your organization’s success or failure will likely depend on how well you lead others.
In the book The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki, the author mentioned that good leaders don’t hesitate to use these four phrases: “I don’t know”, “Thank you”, “Do what you think is right”, and “It’s my fault”. While Guy didn’t explain them further, a lot of other leaders did. Why are those four phrases so important? Here’s why…
Things Great Leaders Say: 4 Leadership Phrases to Learn by Heart
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“I don’t know.”
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T. Harv Eker’s Question: What are the three most dangerous words in the English language?
Answer: “I know that.”
In his Secrets of the Millionaire Mind book, T. Harv Eker taught that successful people continue learning. On the other hand, unsuccessful people pretend that they “already know” everything they need. As a leader, you have to be humble enough to accept that you won’t always have all the facts and that others may know a lot more than you do.
If you pretend to know everything necessary because of pride, you will sooner or later make some terrible mistakes. A lot of those mistakes can be avoided if you listen to people who know more than you, like employees, teammates, and bosses who are actually on the ground working or those who have a better grasp of the situation.
It only takes a few mistakes of this kind before you lose credibility in front of the people you need to lead. Think of it this way. Would you listen to a boss who is clueless as to what’s really going on in your business and won’t listen to you if you tell them something important? You probably won’t, so avoid becoming that boss and be humble enough to acknowledge when you don’t know some things.
This is also why leaders are encouraged to hire people who are better than they are. Just imagine a restaurant manager hiring chefs who are worse than he is at cooking and waiters who are worse than him at attending people. That restaurant might not do so well if that was the case.
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“Thank you.”
Want to be hated by your team members and employees? Take credit for their work and don’t acknowledge their contributions. On the other hand, one simple yet effective way to motivate people is by showing appreciation.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric and author of the book Winning taught that “leaders also establish trust by giving credit where credit is due. They never score off their own people by stealing an idea and claiming it as their own.”
While it’s tempting to think that we achieved our current level of success because of our own hard work, the reality is that we got to where we are largely because of the help of others. While I currently can’t remember where I heard this lesson (and Google search isn’t giving me the answer for now), we have to remember this lesson if we want to lead well: successful leaders are successful only because other people want them to be.
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“Do what you think is right.”
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling while they do it”, said Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.
How many of us don’t want to delegate things or give duties to others because we think we’re the only ones who can “do it right”? That’s a habit you have to get rid of as soon as possible.
In the “Redefine time” lesson of The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, he taught that you should allocate for yourself some free days where none of your team members should interrupt you except for real emergencies. Give your people enough training and responsibility to get things done even if you’re not there, and that will force them to grow and become more confident and self-reliant.
As leaders, we want our people to grow and become leaders themselves. We can start that process by giving them enough training, duties, responsibilities, and freedom to do what they need to do.
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“It’s my fault.”
Here’s yet another lesson from Jack Welch. He taught that “in bad times, leaders take responsibility for what’s gone wrong.”
While we can always find an excuse and blame someone or something else for our failures, that is not something we should do if we want to grow as a leader. Playing the blame game can make us lose a lot of trust and goodwill. Who’d support a person who would stab them in the back and blame them for problems anyway, right?
If we want to succeed, we have to take responsibility for our results. We have to solve problems as they arise even if they were caused by someone else, learn from them to prevent similar problems from happening in the future, and we have to take responsibility for getting things done, either by ourselves or through the people we lead.
If we want to become better leaders…
We must be humble enough to acknowledge other people’s knowledge, contributions, and expertise…
We must thank others for their help and contributions…
We must trust and allow others to do what needs to be done without our meddling…
…and we must take responsibility when things go wrong.
Leadership is a very broad subject that will take lifetimes to master. For now, all we can do is learn them one lesson at a time.
We’ll end this lesson here. If you want to learn more, come and check out a few of our other leadership and management articles here:
- Management and Leadership Skills: A Few Short Lessons for Career Success
- Five Essential Leadership Lessons You must Learn NOW
- Do YOU have the Leadership Habit?