As a leader I find my fulfillment within the success my subordinates’ experience while executing the strategies and plans that we have put in place. This amounts to me experiencing success in the third dimension by watching others succeed.

I first learned this as a basketball coach, watching my kids on the court successfully execute strategy we had worked on in practice. That was the expression of my success. The more they were recognized the more successful I felt and the more successful I really was.

This is an important lesson in leadership for anyone who wants to be in a position of leading others, either on the field of play or in the boardroom. As I have said many times before, you cannot be a leader if no one is willing to follow you, and no one will be willing to follow you if they don’t trust you. This means that leadership is really about service and about facilitating. It is about allowing the success of others on your team to lift you to greater heights of achievement.

The question becomes this. What is in the wake of your life. Is it broken promises, people who don’t trust you, people who don’t like you, people for whom your presence in their life has been a negative. Or is it kept promises, is it people whose lives have been enriched and lifted up because of your presence in their life.

This really becomes the definition of leadership from the third person perspective. Consider an individual who is looking back at your life objectively, without political spin. It’s not a question of “What’s in your wallet?” as the commercial asks. It is instead a question of “what’s in your life” and the impact of what’s in your life on others.

In other words don’t measure your success as a leader from your own perspective. That will always be biased. Measure instead from the third party perspective, which represents how others feel about you and your leadership role

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