Lead Like a Teacher
✅ Science:
Science confirms that leaders who mentor and teach activate intrinsic motivation, leading to deeper learning, stronger loyalty, and higher performance.
Fear-based leadership may force short-term compliance, but in the long run, it kills innovation, breeds resentment, and erodes trust.
✅ Deming:
W. Edwards Deming, a visionary statistician and management consultant, knew this decades before science proved it.
He revolutionized leadership by teaching that great leaders develop people, not control them.
In the 1950s, Japan embraced Deming’s philosophy—mentorship, quality, and continuous improvement—fueling an economic transformation so effective that Western companies scrambled to catch up.
His 14 Points for Management emphasized:
✔ Trust over fear
✔ Systems over blame
✔ Learning over punishment
Deming proved that great leaders act as teachers. Empower your people, and they’ll surpass you.
✅ My Example:
When my husband and I owned our restaurant, we hired two teenage hostesses who were such natural leaders that within four months, they were running busy weekend nights better than I ever could.
So, I mentored them.
Their skill freed me up to support our servers, engage with guests, and make every night a great experience.
Unfortunately, we eventually closed due to post-COVID difficulties.
On our last night, I told them, “When you grow up, I expect you to run the world.”
They grinned. “Don’t worry,” they said, “We will.”
Have you ever mentored someone who stepped up in ways you never expected? Please share your story!
~*~
This is one of my Big Ideas posts—where I explore how new ideas, good science, creativity, and bold leadership can help us build a better world.
I believe ADHD leaders have the empathy and creativity to solve the world’s biggest problems, and I want to support as many of them as possible as they step into leadership.
Take what resonates, and make it your own.
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