The Leader Ship

What is a ‘leader’, anyway?

There are two kinds of people:

one walks into the room and says ‘here I am!’

the other walks into the room and says ‘there you are’.

What is a leader? And how do you know (and be) a good one?

Years ago, I had a manager who was a poor leader. When we’d introduce ourselves at meetings, that manager would always say: “My name is X, and a,b, and c report to me.” That manager felt the first, most important thing to say in meetings was who ‘reported’ to them.

The manager also had great difficulty listening to other people’s ideas, and was visibly uncomfortable with questions. They spent most of their time talking, telling people what to do, and often described how experienced they were (and therefore knew best). Team meetings consisted of awkward silence while the manager talked and compliant team members nodded. They’d berate other teams (and people) in private. Most of all, they didn’t trust anyone on the team to make any decisions, and carefully monitored who they talked to, and what was said.

Ironically, that manager often complained about how little support and understanding they got from their manager.

Within a year or so, that manager left for another job outside the company.

Leadership is hard. Few people get the training, guidance, and mentoring they need to develop into a leader. Instead, being a leader is often just a job you apply for, and boom, there you are—with a team but little or no preparation for the real job, which is leadership.

Leadership isn’t easy to measure, either—it requires judgment and often plain old gut feeling to identify, assess, and nurture leadership skill and potential. Unfortunately, the people making that judgment also likely received little preparation in leadership.

So for most work environments, ‘leadership’ ends up meaning nothing more than ‘meeting business goals’ or ‘supervision’. And when the job is defined that way, leaders operate mainly by telling other people what to do and monitoring them.

What is a leader, then? Or at least what should a leader be? If there’s no path to developing and mentoring leaders in your work life, what should a leader be?

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. —Lao Tzu

Leadership comes down to this: Being a good leader is all about other people, not you.

Leadership is not:

• telling other people what to do.

• how much experience or domain knowledge you have.

• having the best ideas—or all the ideas.

• talking more than you listen.

Leadership is:

• listening to those you lead, and considering what you hear.

• trusting those you lead.

• dedication to the development, needs, and success of those you lead.

• always encouraging questions and ideas, and willingness to have your own ideas challenged.

• recognizing that the success of who you lead is what you’re there for. And that by doing that, everybody (including you) succeeds.

• humility.

Leadership requires a lot of humility, empathy, and genuine interest in empowering other people. Having the self-confidence to not put your ego first. It requires valuing the voices, opinions and ideas of others as equal to (or better than) your own. If those are present in a leader, the rest will come almost naturally. If they’re not, it’s very hard to be a good leader.

Most people think the military works like this: leaders issue orders, and everyone complies. That an officer or senior enlisted person’s job is to command—_to wield authority to get what they want. But in reality, any successful military leader will tell you the _opposite is true: you give as few orders as possible. You mostly listen. You understand that your staff is the source of the best ideas, they know the work best, and that your job is to be there for them—and if you do that, they’ll be there for you.

Leadership is not about being in charge_. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge. — Simon Sinek