Leadership OS by Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur - Preview

CHAPTER 1: HOW LEADERSHIP WORKS

When our children were just two years old, they could use an iPhone. Not because they were especially smart (although as loving parents, we obviously believed they were). Nor because the phone was well built from quality components. It was because the operating system software on the phone was so well designed. It created an interface and environment that was so easy to navigate that our kids intuitively knew how to open apps and play games, without ever being shown how. It was similar when the first personal computers came out, too. What enabled them to take off as mass products was the introduction of the Mac OS and Windows operating systems, which made them easy for even those new to computing to use. The hardware – the processors and drives – was important, but it was the operating systems that really made these products work well. And it is the same with leadership. As a leader, having the necessary core components – the skills, characteristics and capabilities – is essential. Things like decisiveness, strategic thinking and influencing skills are critical, required ingredients. But they are also just foundations. Because as leaders rise to more senior levels, their jobs become less about doing things themselves that directly drive results, and more about directing and supporting other people to do so. They do this by affecting things like what their team focus on, how motivated people are, what the levels of cooperation are, how decisions get made, and how empowered people are to speak up, challenge thinking and contribute new ideas. In other words, leaders create an operating environment, or system, for their people. And just as with the operating system (OS) on a phone or computer, it is this Leadership OS that is the difference between failure and success. Leaders can have all the core components

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