Great Leadership Seeks Great Leadership

You are known by the company you keep ... of course, that concept applies to negative influences. When you spend your time with people of questionable integrity or work ethic, that affects your image and it may even effect your behavior. Certainly, you want to avoid spending time with people who bring you down.

But you also want to proactively spend time with people who elevate you. You want to seek out people who make you better than you already are. As a leader, you want to spend time with other leaders.

Many top executives will tell you that they try to surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are. It's a sign of immaturity to build your team with people who are incompetent, so that you're ego can be satisfied in knowing that you are superior. Great leaders will surround themselves with even better leaders.

If you're the smartest guy in the room, then you're not the smartest guy in the room. 

David Lykken is 40-year industry veteran who has been an owner operator of three mortgage banking companies and a software company. As co-founder and managing partner of Mortgage Banking Solutions, David consults on virtually all aspects of mortgage banking with special emphasis executive leadership development, corporate strategic direction and implementation, as well as mergers and acquisitions. A regular contributor on CNBC and Fox Business News, David also hosts a successful weekly radio program, “Lykken on Lending,” that is heard each Monday at noon (Central Standard Time) by thousands of mortgage professionals. Recently, he started producing one-minute videos called “Today’s Mortgage Minute” that appears on hundreds of television, radio and newspaper Web sites daily across America. He may be reached by phone at (512) 977-9900, ext. 10, or e-mail [email protected] or [email protected].