What's Impeding Your Progress?

When it comes to defining what is impeding your organization’s progress and holding back your people from realizing all that they are capable of achieving, Ralph Waldo Emerson summed it up as well as anyone ever has.

His observation was that “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.”

As human beings, you and your people have the innate ability to simply get in your own way. All too often, the biggest obstacle that is holding back your people in their life and work are their own self imposed limitations.

As a leader it is your direct responsibility to bring out the best in your people. In like fashion, you are also charged with the additional responsibility of improving performance, productivity and efficiency.

Yet, just like your people… You as well struggle to keep up with the demands of the day and allow your own self imposed limitations and bad habits to impede your personal performance.

A few years ago in his popular comic strip Pogo, cartoonist Walt Kelly poked fun at this aspect of life while at the same time addressing the matter head-on when Pogo said to his troops “We have met the enemy… And he is us!”

The continued forward progress of your organization is dependent on two primary prerequisites; leadership that can engage and people that are capable of achieving peak performance.

People only achieve success when there is someone to show them how to succeed and subsequently provide them with the support and encouragement that they need in order to succeed.

Concurrently, your people need superiors who lead by example, for it is by the specific example of demonstrating the organization’s standards for excellence that will provide your people with their most powerful source of influence to do the same.

Albert Einstein aptly addressed this process when he stated “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.”

While your organization has great potential, it will never get to the next level until such time as its leadership addresses the obstacles that are currently impeding the organization’s progress.

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