Welcome to issue No. 076 of the Lever

The fastest way to become an effective leader isn’t tactics on how to give feedback, or keep a meeting on track.

The fastest way to become an effective leader is to:

• Adopt a handful of principles
• Communicate them
• Act accordingly
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This is what I mean

But First...

Check out this free course from 16-year leadership vet Julia Snedkova.

As an ICF certified coach, Julia helps people level up and lead with impact.

​Get it over on X.​

What is a Principle?

You know how everybody talks about going back to “first principles”?

It’s because when you start at the FIRST principle, you have a strong foundation. Everything else builds on top of that.

A Principle is a universal truth. It is:

• True in all situation
• For all people
• All the time
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When you adopt a principle like this you anchor your leadership.

Because it tells you exactly what to do.

The 5 Principles

There are 5 core principles that will make you a good leader:

1. Mistakes will happen
2. Blame fixes nothing
3. How you respond matters
4. Context influences behavior
5. Learning is vital
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Let’s consider number 2 as an example:

“Blame fixes nothing”.

Can you think of ANY situation where blaming somebody was a great option?

Maybe it makes you feel superior in the moment but it doesn’t do anything to solve the issue you are blaming them for.

It’s a totally unproductive action that takes you further from a solution. And because much of being a leader is solving problems blame actively makes you worse at that core skill.

But if you accept the Principle that blame fixes nothing, then a few things happen:

• People stop hiding problems
• So you can fix them faster
• And move forward
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Which is ultimately the most effective scenario.

Communicate Them Constantly

As a new leader you must share your principles immediately.

And restate them constantly.

Letting your team know where you stand is vital. It tells them how you want to be communicated with, and sets them up for success.

Fortunately, the Principles are easy to remember and it’s easy to come up with little sayings to use in different situations.

“Thanks for bringing that up, Jenn. Mistakes are just a trigger for improvement. Let’s figure out how to fix this.”

(an example of How You Respond Matters)

Act Accordingly

Principles dictate actions.

Imagine this instead:

“Jeez Jenn, you really screwed that up! We are going to lose the account and it’ll be all your fault!”

Your actions must be guided by your principles. If not, you instantly lose trust and credibility.

But when your words and actions align you begin to embody the trait of Consistency.

And Consistency is required if you want to be a leader that people follow willingly.

Your actions are where the rubber meets the road. By sharing your principles early and often you are setting up the expectation on how you will act.

Both for your team, and for yourself.

Next Steps

I’m going to dig into the 5 Principles over the next few weeks, and how they interact.

My goal is to get you to think deeper on them and accept them as your own.

Because once you do that you’ll have set a strong anchor to start from, and to fall back to.

And then you can start to focus on what a leader actually does.

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