Leadership Lesson from Randy Pausch

Pausch did a great job in elucidating the fact that a good leader understands the subtleties of his/her actions and the impact of the responses that are elicited from those actions.

One example of this was, quite simply, a day he had planned to spend with his niece and nephew. He picked them up in a brand new car and his sister gave her kids a stern reminder not to get the car dirty. Randy proceeded to open up a can of pop and poured it on one of the back seats. He then told his companions for the day, that they had nothing to worry about, because the damage had already been done. The kids and Randy had a great day because the focus was on productivity (having fun) and not on avoiding a negative event.

The point he obviously was making, was that just a few words from a leader can either set us up for failure (or tenative thinking, at best), or free-up the person to perform at a high level. In the kids case, they had a high level of fun.

- From a Linkedin discussion