In the late Twentieth Century, I sat amongst a large group while listening to a motivational speaker. He opened his presentation by congratulating his audience on paying the money to see his speech. “That very act,” he said, “proves conclusively that every one of you is a leader. You’re a leader just for being here today!” The crowd roared its self-serving appreciation at this line, while I jotted a note to myself to think about that later on.
I approached that speaker after the presentation and asked him what the definition of leadership was, so that I could compare that with his statement that the several-thousand people in attendance were automatically leaders. He seemed annoyed that I wasn’t asking him for an autograph and tossed off a quick answer, “Why don’t you go look it up and figure it out for yourself?”
That was the best advice he’d given me all day — so, that’s what I did.
Unfortunately, the dictionary was somewhat unhelpful. The first definition of ‘Leadership’ given is either “the activity of leading,” or “the position or function of a leader.” The definition of the word ‘Leader’ begins: “a person or thing that leads,” and the word ‘Lead’ comes with no less than forty-six definitions. By the time I closed the book, I was no closer to understanding what leaders really were or how to be one.
Leadership is not about memorization, after all (nor is learning); that’s why those books that present leadership as a complicated and detailed set of color-coded charts generally miss the point. If you’re busy reciting an acronym to yourself or picturing a graph, odds are good that you’re not leading. The best leadership teachers and coaches I’ve ever known (including Dick Knox, Ryan Underwood, and others already mentioned in this book) presented leadership as something quite simple. I didn’t have to try to memorize what leadership was, because it turns out that I instinctively already understood it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about business leadership, personal leadership, or family leadership — the definition never changes. Leadership is the art of motivating and inspiring your team to accomplish your goals. That’s leadership — plain and simple — and that’s what leaders do. At the risk of insulting that motivational speaker whom I met a few years back, it takes a bit more than paying to attend a class to become a leader. Leaders aren’t necessarily the people who hold fancy titles such as President, Consultant, or Director, either. Titles do not spontaneously generate leadership. Leadership, on the other hand, does seem to generate impressive titles for the people who practice it.
Some of my professors have discussed “the science of leadership” which has woefully misled their students. The difference between science and art is simple: In science, there is one and only one correct answer. For instance, a normal human body always has the same number of bones; the periodic table of elements always begins with hydrogen; one plus one always equals two. In art, on the other hand, a concept called Equifinality is the order of the day. Equifinality means that there are many roads to success, possibly an infinite number. Could you only use watercolors for a beautiful painting? Is there only one kind of joke that would actually be funny? Is there only one correct way to say, “I love you,” to someone? There are an infinite number of ways to approach these tasks, and many completely different approaches will lead you to an equal degree of success. That’s Equifinality.
There is no one correct way to be a manager or leader, and what works for one person may not work for another. Some people are born to lead autocratically, and that approach can work. Some people are perfectly capable of keeping their teams focused and their employees happy while they lead with an iron fist. However, if someone with more of a laid-back approach to work were to see this iron-fisted leadership method and think, So that’s how it’s done! I should try to copy that, they’d be dooming themselves to an awkward failure. We each have our own optimal leadership approach, based on our own working style and ethic.
Because we have more than one road to success, leadership is an art and not a science. Leadership has some elements of science in it, though, because all good leaders have a few things in common. For instance, all good leaders have a certain level of respect for the members of their team. All good leaders keep an open mind for new ideas when approached by their followers. Despite the concept of equifinality, there are some rules of good leadership that simply cannot be broken without seriously hampering your team’s effectiveness. Since having an effective team is the whole point of practicing leadership, then those rules can’t be avoided.
A leader, a truly rare person, is a manager who actually motivates a team, who inspires subordinates, and who makes everyone want not only to succeed, but also to take it to a level that it has never been before. The usual symptoms of a business team led by a real leader are job satisfaction, high productivity, and rampant promotions. One of the challenges of being a leader is having to face constant employee turnover; not because they quit or are fired, but because they get promoted so quickly.
Part of the reason why leadership is so rare in the business and political arenas is that success can create a sense of entitlement. You believe that you were promoted to management due to your superior skills; thus, you believe that you are automatically entitled to the respect and admiration of your new team. You believe you deserve to be listened to and even catered to. You believe you have the best ideas, and it is your new team’s role to listen. You’ve worked your tail off; you’ve earned a promotion, and now you get to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. You’ve been successful; you’re entitled to this.
Success in the business world can create a sense of entitlement, which conflicts with true servant leadership. Does a leader belong at the top of the totem pole, or does a leader belong at the bottom? Do team members exist to serve the leader, or does a leader exist to serve the members of the team? Do team members strive to bring success to their manager, or does their manager work to bring success to the entire team?
The concept of servant leadership is not a difficult one to understand, but it is one that is against human nature to emulate. The very idea that the reward for struggling to the top of a corporate ladder is nothing more than being the servant of those who rank far below you . . . well, it can be hard to swallow for many business executives. Servant leaders don’t live rock-star lives — with the best hotel rooms and restaurants. Instead, they conserve those resources to reward deserving employees. Servant leaders don’t get to sit back and merely order people to succeed. They have to sit down with those people and work out success together. In other words, servant leaders don’t get to reap the rewards of their managerial positions right away. They have to wait a bit for greater gains in the long-term.
Leadership is the act of inspiring and motivating a team to accomplish their goals. The best way to do this is to be a servant leader, because equality is a concept that motivates people. A popular movie super-hero uses the line, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and nowhere is that more true than in the political and business worlds of leadership. If you have the power of a leader, then you have the responsibility to use it to help your followers. If you have the power of a business leader, you have the responsibility to protect your employees, to please your customers, and to generate profit. If you work for any business, then that’s your job.
When faced with success, leaders not only reward their teams but also recognize that the success was not big enough. There’s always opportunity for improvement. When faced with failure, leaders place priority on fixing the problem first. If leaders see failure to create profit, failure to fulfill the mission, or failure to stick to the plan, the first item of business is not to punish the person responsible; the first item of business should be to find the root of the problem and nullify it. Leaders guide their teams in focusing on the task at hand and minimizing the impact of the failure.
In a post-play review, everyone (not just the leader) should go over the events of the plan’s implementation. What did we do well? What did we do wrong? Did we have all the resources we needed to pull it off? Where are our weaknesses and how can we address them? How can we make sure everything runs more smoothly next time? What did we do that was acceptable but could have been much better? Leaders have a unique ability to bring to the forefront what the group has learned from their experience. Making team members answer those questions (instead of a leader answering them himself) will aid those members in their growth, in their understanding, and in their self-awareness.
Of course, no leader should limit her feedback to the negative. Strengths and weaknesses should be equally addressed. If someone went above and beyond the call of duty or performed significantly beyond expectation, he should be recognized, rewarded, and used as a trainer for the rest of the team. If there was a best practice that came to the fore while the plan was being carried out, it may be time to share that best practice with the other team members and, if applicable, other teams in your organization. A very important responsibility of the leader is to manage the group’s weaknesses and maximize the team’s strengths. Before you can do either of those, you have to understand exactly what they are.
Real leaders are masters of six critical skills:
- Communicating, which is the art of presenting information effectively, checking for understanding, and actively listening to what others say and believe to reach the most powerful conclusions or solutions.
- Delegating, which is the art of assigning the right person to the right task and distributing work in the most efficient manner possible — not micromanaging.
- Motivating, which is the art of convincing people to want the same things as you do.
- Planning, which means establishing and managing a single, realistic, and ambitious set of agreed-upon goals.
- Prioritizing, which is efficiently managing the time of both your employees and yourself.
- Teambuilding, which is the art of creating a group that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Most of these six skills are covered in other chapters in this book. Delegation is not, because the core triad of delegation is very simple: exploit your team’s strengths, develop their weaknesses, and don’t do all the work yourself. For instance, let’s say you need a report completed by the end of the day. You are the best person on your team for this task, with Mary coming in a close second, but Bob is not very skilled at all. Following the triad of delegation, so long as no other tasks are of higher priority, Mary is assigned the task, while Bob is instructed to watch and learn. Granted, you could do it faster and more efficiently, but developing your staff for long-term growth is often equally important.
That’s a key issue which many managers miss. As a business leader, your job isn’t merely to achieve a task as effectively and efficiently as possible. Your job is to do all that while laying the groundwork for an even more efficient and effective future. The only way to do this is to develop every employee in the company. These people are your Talent and one of the four key components of a business. Remember, the only way to improve a business is to improve the people and the processes. People are improved through experiential learning, which can, in turn, be driven through proper task delegation.
Teambuilding is a fairly simple concept as well, because it can happen almost automatically in the presence of servant leadership. The driver of teambuilding is respect, mutual respect, for all members of the team as well as for the leader. That does not necessarily mean that all team members will be best friends; they don’t even have to like each other. The key is recognizing each others’ talents, respecting them, and understanding how they fit together toward a common goal.
How do you build a team? Even the most diverse group of people can be turned into a fully-supportive team with active inspiration and communication. Teambuilding means pointing out successes in public to a group to build mutual respect, and it means addressing failures in private to avoid embarrassment and dissension. Teambuilding means making time to learn about your coworkers’ personal lives and what matters to them. Teambuilding means holding regular meetings and allowing everyone a chance to contribute. Allowing team members to share ideas and work together helps build a team nicely, and so do paid working lunches.
All six critical skills fall naturally into the concepts of leadership and servant leadership — humbly motivating and inspiring your team to accomplish your goals. Without communication, your team doesn’t know what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. Without delegation, your team doesn’t understand who’s doing what, and the leader himself is left with all the work (and if you’re doing all the work yourself, you’re no leader, because you don’t truly need a team). Without motivation, your team won’t do anything, because they won’t have any reason to do anything. Without planning, your team will be chaotic and unfocused. Without prioritizing, your team won’t understand the Purpose and Mission of your business, nor will they manage their time efficiently. And without teambuilding, your team will go to work for your competitor because you haven’t given them an intrinsic reason to stay.
Leadership isn’t complicated; it’s simple. You’re not a leader just for showing up, nor do you inherit leadership skills along with a fancy title. Leaders create solutions by working within teams. Leaders generate loyalty through service. Leaders are profitable because they create focus.
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