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Thanks to Exchange Leader Fiona Stewart for today's message.

I believe a key aspect of leadership is giving others the support and space to do their jobs well. I find that most people want to do their best and excel at their work. They often just need the chance and the trust that they can do it. A leader’s job is to create those opportunities and provide the resources and guidance to be successful.

Often people will succeed and accomplish tasks or projects in ways that I wouldn’t have thought of because they used their knowledge, skills and ideas to accomplish them. I think successful leaders know that their way is not the only way and that others may have different strengths that they bring to the work.

As I wrote in my book, Building Together: Collaborative Leadership in Early Childhood Systems (2019), “One of my favorite phrases that I hear my staff say is, ‘I got this.’ To me, this is a wonderful example of leadership.” By nurturing others' strengths, a leader can lift others up so they can see the work through. They begin to develop their own solutions to challenges and ways of doing things. They build skills and have successes. They become leaders who’ve got this! As Maya Angelou stated, “A leader sees greatness in other people. He nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees is herself.”

Learn more about the Exchange Leadership Initiative. For more on collaborative leadership, see Stewart's leadership blog.

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