The Responsible Leader

(A nugget from Success)

John Quincy Adams defined a leader as someone who inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.

Simon Sinek, an author who also considers himself a student of leadership, has observed the following traits of leaders:

• Leaders set the environment and tone of an organization, and take responsibility for the care of people in their environment, enabling them to perform at their best.  
• Leaders are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people, and are willing to sacrifice personal comforts, perks and advantages to do so.
• Great leaders never, ever sacrifice people to save the numbers, they sacrifice the numbers to save people.

Like exercise, the effects of good leadership are not measured in daily increments, but over the course of time. Because leaders and investors have to also keep an eye on the bottom line, very often the virtues of long term investment in people are overshadowed by more measurable things like revenues, profitability and market share.  However, organizations with great leadership realize intense employee loyalty.  

Charlie Kim, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Next Jump, considers it his responsibility to help the company's employees grow as people.  Over strenuous objections, Mr. Kim makes massive investments in mentorship training, exercise and health programs. His willingness to put himself in harms way to grow his people forward is rare. However, time has proven his wisdom. Not only is the company extremely successful, the staff is intensely loyal. While most engineering companies have an annual turnover of about 40%, Next Jump's turnover rate is in the low single digits. Check out their website to be inspired: www.nextjump.com.