Rudy On Leadership - Promises & Expectations

Even though he has withdrawn from the race for the Republican Presidential nomination -- and I really don't know which Republican candidate to get behind now -- I'm still greatly enjoying Rudy Giuliani's book on Leadership.

UNDERPROMISE AND OVERDELIVER:

• A leader must manage not only results but expectations.
• Don't announce an initiative until the results are already in. Try it out, refine it, get at least a preliminary set of results -- then announce the plan.
• Avoid mentioning what you've done until you've actually accomplished something.
• Often it's to a leader's benefit not to let others know what he's up to until the last possible moment.
• Another reason to announce results rather than intentions is that you can pursue a strategy without waiting for a consensus to build around it.
• Every initiative has supporters and detractors. No matter how "positive" a plan seems, there's always a side that considers itself the losers.
• A leader should go ahead and lead -- not in an arrogant way, and not without abundant input from others.
• A leader who fails to act until every group has been heard from, every concern addressed, every lawsuit resolved, is a leader who's abdicating his responsibility.

PROMISE ONLY WHEN YOU'RE POSITIVE

• Grand rhetorical promises undermine a leader's authority.
• When you don't know the answer, you've got to be honest enough to say so.

DON'T TURN A VICTORY INTO A DEFEAT

• In announcing expectations before he knows the results, a leader risks turning a positive development into a disappointment.
• One of the duties of a leader is to let his staff know how he expects them to behave.
• The risk of turning a victory into a failure is more than just a matter of impression and morale. Sometimes a misguided prediction can actually do some harm.

Joe