5 Signs You Are Becoming an Irrelevant Leader

So how relevant are you as a leader?

Any idea how you’d answer that accurately?

You can debate how important relevance is all day long (and many do), but the truth is irrelevant leaders make almost no impact on the people or causes around them.

Why is that?

Well, it’s not about being current or cool. Relevance matters for one reason: it’s permission to speak into the culture. Our culture has a habit of not listening to people it deems irrelevant.

Relevance simply gains you a hearing. It determines whether or not people pay attention to you or whether they ignore you.

Relevance isn’t necessarily an age thing. You can be relevant at 65 and irrelevant at 25. It’s more a mindset than it is anything else.

One often ignored factor that can push you toward irrelevance is, paradoxically, success.

Leaders who are part of growing or large organizations are especially prone to irrelevance unless they guard against it.

In fact, as we’ve discussed here more than a few times, the great enemy of your future success is your current success because your success makes you conservative.

When you had nothing to lose, change was easy. Now that you have something to lose, change is that much harder.

Your past success doesn’t guarantee your future success.

So whether your organization has momentum or whether it’s losing steam, here are 5 signs you’re becoming an irrelevant leader. Read More