Let’s bring a scientific approach to leadership.  One of the strengths of the scientific approach is to challenge assumptions. Very often, our leadership is full of assumptions. For example, things we believe to be true about people, about ourselves, about the reactions of others, and about what we consider to be true.

Let’s challenge some of these assumptions:

“Play it Safe” – Successful people play to win, and not to be safe. Leadership (and in fact, most of life) is about playing offense, and not defense. No great things were achieved by playing safe.

“Don’t get too much attention” – Laying low is just a variation of playing safe. Turn it around: get attention. Get known. Have an opinion. Have your opinion – not the opinion you think will be liked or accepted. Above all, speak your opinion. Often, the best known product wins.

“Diversify your money” – How about going all in? Put all your eggs in one basket, and focus on that basket. Moreover, the saying “the grass is always greener on the other side” is wrong. The grass is always greener where you water it. In short, leadership is not about playing the odds, it’s about making things happen.

“Change is difficult” – We are ready to make changes in our lives. Examples are, getting married, having kids or relocating for a job. The problem with change at work is that we look too much at the ‘what’ and don’t have a good ‘why’. Find a good ‘why’ and change will be easy.

“Getting in shape is hard” – You know that you can look and feel better. In addition, you know what it will do to your self-esteem, confidence and energy level. Just get on with it. Lead yourself instead of describing the obstacle.

“Don’t talk to strangers” – Connect with a stranger. For no reason. See what happens. There is a stranger out there who can help you get access to anything you want in your life. Above all else, your network is your net worth. Your leadership is access to that network.

Take the next step – Use a Scientific Approach in Your Leadership

Even though leadership itself is not a science as we shared in this previous article “Is Leadership and Art or a Science? Or something else?“, using a scientific approach to leadership is a great practice to advance our skills. Here’s how to do it: focus on challenging one assumption about your leadership. Test it out, see what would be the case if the opposite were true. Run a ‘leadership experiment’. See what becomes possible and what relationships open up. Let me know how it went!