OmniTRAX Leadership Blogs
Issue 1
This post is the beginning of our OmniTRAX Leadership Blog Series covering key aspects of our vision for our company, the industries we’re active in and the customers we serve.
Leadership is all around, we just need to open our eyes
By Kevin Shuba, CEO of OmniTRAX, Inc.
Anybody who knows me even a little bit knows about my appreciation and admiration for Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K, head coach of Duke University’s basketball team for the last 38 years. I had the good fortune to play for him when he was at the US Military Academy and have been learning about leadership from him ever since.
Three of my favorite Coach K quotes are:
“In leadership, there are no words more important than trust. In any organization, trust must be developed among every member of the team if success is going to be achieved.”
“When a leader takes responsibility for his own actions and mistakes, he not only sets a good example, he shows a healthy respect for people on his team.”
“Leaders show respect for people by giving them time.”
To these, I’ll add this one on being a leader: “I get a group of people who are talented to commit to excellence and to work together as one. That’s where it starts. Different talents, same commitment.”
Coach K also has a few straightforward principles for leadership, including:
- Adjust your strategy to your team
- Be your best player’s best friend
- It’s the leader’s job to get rid of distractions
- Don’t have rules, have standards
After three decades in leadership roles, I’ll add the following bits of advice gleaned from several experts I’ve experienced first-hand:
- Leaders must have the ability to maintain an unrelenting focus on the future and a determination to make difficult, sometimes transformational changes.
- Your team is your greatest resource; listen to their feedback and encourage their dreams. You never know where your next great idea will come from, so empower everyone to communicate and then listen.
- You must adopt the attitude that there is no challenge too big to handle so your will follow suit. Then every problem will create an opportunity for greater success.
The bottom line is that without leadership, everything else fades. Strong leaders help organizations maximize performance, while weak leaders do the opposite and can potentially test the viability of an organization.
I encourage readers with any thoughts or insights on this content to comment in the space below; this blog is for you and we want to make sure it meets that goal. For private feedback, feel free to email our editors at leadershipblog@omnitrax.com.
In the next blog post, our CFO Hubert Gassner will get a bit technical and share his insights into one of the latest shining objects executives are talking about – blockchain. I can’t wait to read it.