How Did You Do As a Leader?

Joe Cirulli, the founder and owner of Gainesville Health & Fitness Centers, offers reflection over how you performed as a leader.

Wow. Have we learned about leadership over this past year or what?

If you want to learn about what a “leader” is truly made of, create a challenging situation. Better yet, create a pandemic. Depending on where we lived over the last 18 months, we have seen people in that role operate on two different levels.

Level One: place your boot on the neck of those you lead. Level Two: trust those you lead will make the right decision once all is understood.

In really challenging times, leaders have to make fast decisions and at times, direct orders may be appropriate. But the role of the leader has to be to assess the situation as quickly as possible, and then the hard work begins.

It’s called trusting those you lead. It’s also called defining the goals and putting a plan together with your team.

When the tough decisions are made, everyone has to live by those decisions. When the leader has his or her own rules, their entire role is diminished. Think of a few state leaders who lost the support of their people. The leader is the biggest role model in any organization.

This past 18 months was truly eye opening in many regards.

We had health challenges, government mandates, businesses being shut down, businesses reopening and then being shut down again, member cancellations, government paperwork, county dictates, members complaining about mask mandates on both sides — we had it all.

So how did you do? If you tried to do it all yourself, you may not even be reading this article. But if you brought the challenge to your team, they have or would have responded in ways that made you look like a champion.

In conclusion, who were the winners and losers over this last year? Those who used the boot, or those who trusted their team?