The Greatest Leaders In The World Were Not Problem-Solvers

You can solve all your problems and still not be any closer to your vision.

Great leaders knew this to be true!

Instead, of reacting or responding to their circumstances they brought a new vision and got to work creating it.

There are three leadership orientations and leaders tap all three in their own unique way.  But it's in the third orientation that distinguishes great leaders!

Which leadership orientation do you spend the most time in?  

In this video, we'll explore why the greatest leaders in the world were not problem-solvers.

Too many leaders boast about their ability to solve problems.  I think it's missing the point of great leadership.

What do you think?

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The Greatest Leaders In The World Were Not Problem-Solvers

Transcript - May 14, 2020

The greatest leaders in the world weren't problem solvers.

I think you're watching this video because you desire to be a great leader. You're in a position of leadership today and you care deeply about a vision that you're trying to bring to life.

Maybe you own a business, maybe you're a leader in an organization trying to move toward a bigger vision.

And I'm here to tell you that problem solving will not get you there. The greatest leaders in the world weren't problem solvers, per se.

So before we get into that, let me introduce myself really quick. My name is Zach. I'm a performance leadership coach with Create Purpose. I work with a lot of entrepreneurial leaders.

What I mean by that is I work with leaders that are building something, whether they're building a business, they're building a team, or they're building a career. They're building something where they care deeply about the direction in which they're moving, and the positive impact that they desire to make in others.

I help those individuals get more of what they want in their lives and their business.

Today we're talking about great leaders and how they weren't problem solvers.

We're going to take a step back here and look at this in a specific way that I think is going to shed some light for you. I think as we go through this that you're going to discover a truth here--that problem solving will not get you to your final destination.

You can solve all your problems and still not be any closer to the goal or the vision.

Let's get into it.

There are three orientations, or types of leadership, that we tend to show up with.

The first orientation is the reactive orientation. These are leaders we'll call firefighters.

These leaders are very, very reactive when something happens. They react almost in a knee jerk fashion. These leaders can be very good at jumping on the grenade and just throwing themselves into the problem and solving it.

But oftentimes, in this reactive state, in this firefighting state, they might be able to run through walls as leaders and get a lot done, they often leave a wake of bodies behind them.

They run through people in the process, they ignore everything but the problem and just react to it. Reactive leaders can do more damage than good.

Now, the plus side of this is reactive leaders can get a lot of done really fast. They can solve a lot of problems really fast.

But again, what do we know about problem-solving? Just because we're solving problems, doesn't mean we're any closer to the desired state. That's reactive leadership, that's firefighters.

The second type of leader, the second orientation of leadership, is the responsive leader.

There's a difference here between reactive leadership and responsive leadership because with responsive leadership there's at least a pause.

For the leader that happens before they get into action. With reactive leadership, there is no pause, the action is taken without even thinking. We might throw ourselves into the fire ready to fight whatever we face.

With responsive leaders, however, there's a pause. They think through how they want to present themselves in the situation.

These leaders are very good at seeing the silver lining, they can be very optimistic, and they can even justify some of the failures in order to move their team forward.

None of these traits are good or bad.

Responsive leaders might even be great servant leaders. They'll serve others, they'll be very giving of themselves in order to help others succeed.

These are responsive leaders. These are leaders that are great problem solvers.

But again, if we stop here, we might solve a bunch of problems, but yet being no closer to what we're really trying to create. So that's responsive leadership.

The third orientation is creative leadership, because it isn't until a leader steps into the realm of creativity, that real leadership and growth occurs.

If you think about the world's greatest leaders, they weren't problem solvers. You think about Jesus, you think about Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.: they took something that did not exist, and brought it into the world.

Yes, they might have solved some problems along the way but that wasn't their focus.

They had a vision. They had a dream, and they wanted to see that dream come into reality. And that's exactly what they did.

If we want to take this down to a business example we'd look at Steve Jobs Jeff Bezos.

Again, they created a vision too! Steve Jobs was known for creating great products.

He didn't do consumer surveys trying to figure out what the consumer wants.

He already believed that he knew what they wanted. He already knew what he wanted to bring into the world. And he created that. And it changed things like great leadership does.

I hope you take this away from this training...

Look beyond the problems of today and start creating the future that you want to see.

So, it's important to know what it is that you want to create, what is the future that you want to see, and what is the vision?

It's going to be really hard to move in any direction if you don't know what you're trying to create.

When I'm working with clients in a private coaching relationship, it's often two elements we focus on: it's getting clear on the vision, it's knowing exactly what it is that they desire to create. This becomes an innate desire and a creative expression of what they want to bring into the world because when they can tap into that, they find their power. That's where they found their confidence. That's where they do their greatest work and it's found in getting really clear on their vision.

But then it's also getting clear on what is the current situation, why are things the way they are?

There's an opportunity here because oftentimes in reactive and responsive leadership, we might ignore why things are the way they are, and just respond to it.

If we can get clear on why things are happening the way they are, we can start to change things towards the vision.

So the takeaway here is instead of looking around for problems to solve, I want you to get really good at asking this simple question, "What is the result I desire to create?"

This is a simple shift that you can make to strengthen your leadership presence as you show up for whatever it is you're building.

If you scroll down below, there is a guide with five more tweaks that you can make to tap into your next level of leadership presence. We'll go deeper into the five major shifts that you can make to begin to change how you lead toward positive results.

So check that out...I hope you enjoyed this video. We'll see you soon...

Transcribed by https://otter.ai