Leaders: It’s Your Turn
I’ve blogged about leadership before, but would like to take another run at it. The reason? As leaders of the North American fleet world, now is our collective chance to provoke change like never before.
While we all know leadership is important, when it comes your turn to lead, do you really have the guts to make it happen? Can you be a successful leader?
Leadership is often defined with important words such as:
- “Vision”
- “Inspiration”
- “Motivation”
- “Intelligence”
- “Guide”
- “Direct”
- “Manage”
- “Influence”
And, rightly so—these are great characteristics to describe a leader.
However, there is a natural filter that exists in the world that allows true leaders to emerge victorious again and again, while pseudo-leaders get stalled out before their success begins. That natural filter is the critic. You see, beyond the list of words previously mentioned, there are attitude characteristics that allow successful leaders to persevere in the toughest of times. It is those tough times that cause pseudo-leaders to abandon their dreams, to seek shelter, to find a place of comfort. The true leaders stick to their visions—regardless of how many arrows they’ve taken in the back—because they know there are no easy roads to the greatest goals.
One of my favorite quotes, often referred to as “not the critic,” is framed in my office. In 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
My only goal with this blog is to give you a daily reminder that, as a leader in the movement of alternative fuel deployment, you continue to strive valiantly everyday toward improving your world and the world around you. My only wish for you is that you maintain your course, and the difference that is made, in the end, belongs to all of those that you led.
