Top Insights from Vice President Joe Biden

Leadership Creates Culture
Leadership is about sharing the success and sharing the losses with everyone. It’s about holding yourself accountable; to be open to ridicule, praise, and personal attack in the pursuit to uphold and create a great culture.

Smart Leaders Hire Smart People
Even though most people have a fear of being outshone, surround yourself with people who are smarter than yourself. Do not attribute education to good judgment because even the most incredibly educated people don’t always know how to make the right decisions. Do not underestimate the ability of the human mind to rationalize because character is not a consequence of several different acts, it’s a product of consistency and people upholding their word.

Be Accountable
A leader needs to take extreme accountability on consequential decisions. For example, Barack Obama was willing to put his career on the line in the case of Osama Bin Laden to ensure that psychological and physical terrorist networks were brought down.

“Leadership is making the decisions and owning them.”

Lead By Your Decisions
Leaders need to make the tough decisions. That means taking all the facts and understanding all the perspectives. It also means taking the blame for the consequences of your actions, understanding the risks, and sharing the praise when it’s due.

What Leadership Really Means
The people who change the culture are the people who take risks and make themselves vulnerable to criticism, in hopes of changing the culture, shifting the norm, and setting an example for the rest of the world. Leadership means that you understand that what you are doing is a call of duty; what you do is bigger than just yourself or for your own monetary gain. Ask yourself what value do you have that you are willing to lose in order to succeed and stay true to what you say you are about? How can you be the leader that you want to be and say you are?

 

Leadership is making the decisions and owning them