Written Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff
If you want to read more, please refer to the link above.
1. Speak to people in the language they understand. (Or, it’s okay to threaten a Klingon.)
“In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure.”
Perhaps one of the key skills for any good leader is the ability to empathize and understand the people they work with, both on their team and outside their organizations. This is especially true in a globalized world. People bring to the table not only their skills, but also their experiences, personalities, and cultures. Understanding those cultures and experiences enables you to effectively communicate.
2. When you’re overwhelmed, ask for help.
“You wanted to frighten us. We’re frightened. You wanted to show us we were inadequate. For the moment, I grant that. You wanted me to say ‘I need you.’? I NEED you!”
3. Always value ethical actions over expedient ones.
“There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders.”
Leaders of organizations are often faced with ethical dilemmas – times when it seems that the easiest option is to just “bend the rules a little” to get things done. Captain Picard, too, faced this type of decision on a number of occasions. But Picard had a strong moral center, and he refused to do the wrong thing – even when that seemed to be the easiest thing to do.
In your own job, you’ll probably never encounter a situation where you have to convince the government to recognize a new sentient species. (If you do have that job, though, that’s awesome and please email me for an interview.) But in leadership situations, there are a number of temptations to do the wrong thing to make yourself look better, whether that’s cutting corners to beat a schedule or gaming numbers to make your results look good. It’s in those times we should look to Picard as an example of maintaining our integrity, no matter the short-term costs. In the long-term, integrity is what matters.
4. Challenge your team to help them grow.
“Lieutenant, you are a member of this crew, and you will not go into hiding whenever a Klingon vessel uncloaks!”
Oftentimes, the greatest challenge that a well-run team can face is complacency. When you have a great team where everyone is filling out their roles and doing a good job, it’s pretty easy to just let things lay the way they are and coast on inertia. The problem is, when you have a complacent team, no matter how competent they are, they can fall apart when they’re faced with a big challenge. In order to keep your organization nimble, it’s vital that you encourage your teams to stretch their capabilities, even if that makes them uncomfortable.
When you have someone on your team whose doing their job, and doing it well, it can be hard to assign them new or more difficult tasks in a way that shakes up your organization. But to be an effective leader, you need to shake them up, so that when your team faces harder crises, they’ll be more resilient and effective.
5. Don’t play it safe – seize opportunities in front of you.
“Seize the time… – live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.”
It’s easy to get stuck like that alternate Picard. You can do your job, and at the end of the day go home, with no real plan or goal – just coasting while you let other people tell you what to do. The lesson Picard learned from this experience is the same one that we should learn for ourselves. Life is short, and the time we lose is time we’ll never get back again. When opportunities present themselves, we need to seize them. We need to go forth in our lives, careers and projects with goals and be ambitious about carrying those goals out.
Final Takeaway:
Like James T. Kirk, Captain Jean-Luc Picard embodied several leadership lessons that we can use in our own lives. We need to learn to empathize with others so we can communicate with them effectively. We need to have the confidence to ask for help when we’re overwhelmed without feeling humiliated. When faced with the choice a famous wizard offered, between “what is right and what is easy,” we have to do what is right. We need to challenge our teams to grow and change so they can adapt to any situation. We need to seize opportunities as they come so that we don’t coast through our lives. Follow these lessons, and they’ll take us on the next stage of exploration. Which, in the words of Q on the show, is “not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.”
