Superheroic Leadership Vol. I * No. 4
Take the Short Way Home… It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage
Superheroic Leadership is a light-hearted examination of what superheroic figures have to teach about leadership and what I have learned from their adventures.
Let us put this moment in context. Indiana Jones is racing against time to find the Ark of the Covenant before it can be delivered to Hitler and the Nazis. World War II is brewing. The Allies are good. Nazis are bad. There are decidedly not “some very fine people” among them.
The stakes are life and death.
The work of being a leader is rarely life and death, though it can be. Typically, leaders can arrive at decisions in reasoned and calm fashion, weighing fact and opinions, judging options, making determinations. Leaders often have time in which to lead and space from which to do it.
And those around leaders have opinions. They have suggestions. They have plans of their own, facts and theories and recommendations.
And they should. None of that is bad.
However, there are times when what surrounds decision-making, what encompasses leadership, what slows down the process is too much information, too copious opinions, too many cooks.
Sometimes a leader must simply cut through what is unimportant and superfluous.
Sometimes a leader recognizes that what is happening is distraction and needs to be stopped so a decision can be reached and action can be taken. Being decisive is not always easy. Sometimes there are costs. But leaders know when to act.
Which brings us back to Indiana Jones. World War II. Nazis. Evil.
And a leader who knows what needs to be done.
Read the following as metaphor… and cut through the red tape. Make decisions. Take action.