and effective. There are differences in substance as well as style. Leadership also has a shadow side, as we shall see.
In the past we have often confused style with substance. A leader need not be a charismatic guru performing on stage to fanfares of music, treating their followers as if they were a game-show host. Such charisma is style, not substance; the guide at your side can be as influential as the sage on the stage. Lao Tse, the Chinese philosopher who lived in the sixth century BC, captured this aspect of a leader’s work very nicely when he wrote, ‘A leader is best when people barely know he exists. Not so good when people obey and acclaim him, and worse when they despise him. Fail to honour people and they will fail to honour you. Of a great leader, when his work is done, people say, “We did this ourselves.”’
An effective leader leaves a legacy; they leave their footprints on the road for others to follow. A good leader develops themselves and they develop others. They bring people together rather than divide them. I read a striking example of this in a letter written by the Duke of Wellington to Lord Bradford at the British War Office in 1820. He says, ‘I shall see no officer under my command is debarred, by attending to his first duty, which is, and always has been, to train private men under his command.’
Teaching others to be leaders makes sense on a personal as well as a business level. Parents are leaders in a family and they strive to help their children become independent adults. In business, leaders develop others in order to help them learn and help the organization become more competitive. Business is increasingly becoming knowledge based. What you know defines what you can do. Smart people build smart products. And smart people do not usually work in dumb organizations.
A perennial question about leadership is: ‘Are leaders born or made?’ And the answer is … ‘Yes.’ Both. It’s a misleading question because it is phrased as if the answer must be one or the other. We are all born with skills and talents and we have to make the most of them by learning. Shakespeare wrote, ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.’ No one leaps from the cradle a fully qualified leader. We all have to learn something. Only learning brings out our natural talents.
I am also suspicious of any single answer that closes the debate and takes away choice. For example, if you believe that leaders are born and not made, why try to develop yourself or others as leaders? The question has been answered in your genes.
In researching this book I read a great deal of literature on military leadership and not surprisingly, all of it states explicitly that leaders are made. On the other hand if you assume that leaders are made and a person’s inherent character does not count, then you must concede that everyone is equally good as a leader in any situation, and we all know otherwise.
In my view, being a leader comes from a combination of who you are, your skills and talents, the relationship you create with others and your situation. Being a leader means working with these four core elements. The ‘and’ hides the magic in the equation. Understanding each piece of a jigsaw will not show you the picture until you put them together. Look for leadership in the whole, not in the pieces.
Unless we deal with that systemic aspect of leadership we have only ‘laundry list leadership’, a collection of factors that look good in theory, but do not connect in practice. The pieces may be the right ones but they won’t do anything until they are joined, just as a television will not work with its bits strewn all over the floor.
So, to become a leader, develop yourself, your skills and talents, so you can lead by example. Develop your vision of where you want to go, so you can inspire others to come with you. Develop others and your ability to influence your companions and to evolve a shared vision between you. And develop systemic thinking skills to understand the situation, its limits and opportunities. I think these are the core skills of leadership.
‘Analysing others is knowledge
Knowing yourself is wisdom
Managing others requires skill
Mastering yourself takes inner strength.’
Tao Te Ching
The Three Pillars of Leadership
What do leaders have that puts them at the forefront? And once there, what keeps them there?
Authority – the official or formal position they have.
Knowledge – what they know.
Example – their actions that inspire others to want to be like them.
These are the three pillars of leadership. A leader needs all three to stand firmly.
Authority
Our cultural thinking on leadership has been entangled in wars and battles and heavily influenced by military history. Say ‘leader’ and for many people a picture pops up of troops being led into battle (even though in most cases, the general in charge was at the back directing operations). This military metaphor still colours our view of business leadership and powers the ‘command and control’ management paradigm. It strikes deep. The world of sales is packed to the hilt with military metaphors. Managers talk of ‘leading the troops into battle’, ‘fighting the price war’ and ‘a cut-throat market’, as if the primitive urge to deal with the competition by bombing their boardroom and interning their sales people still appeals. No wonder sales people tend to suffer from battle fatigue known as ‘burn out’. Any metaphor becomes destructive when taken too far and this one has had its day. ‘Customer partnerships’ should be what we hear now.
Leadership by authority
New leadership model
In a strict hierarchy like an army, high rank gives the possibility of leadership over those ‘below’ you, but authority alone falls short of leadership. Authority is not sensitive enough to context.
Managing, as already mentioned, used to be about planning and control. Top management decided what was to be done, middle management worked out how to do it and everyone else did as they were told. This model assumed, of course, that top management knew what needed to be done, that the orders had time to percolate their way down and that, like a good army, the lower ranks would obey.
This type of management would simply not work any more, even if we were still prepared to put up with it. Markets change fast and organizations have to react fast, so people in every part of the business need the knowledge and the permission to make decisions on matters that affect them. As organizations ‘flatten out’, lines of authority start to blur. ‘Top’ management no longer necessarily knows best. Information gives power, not the size of your office. Only change can be relied on.
The business writer and consultant Rosabeth Moss Kanter has beautifully summed up the situation: ‘The mean time between decisions is greater than the mean time between surprises.’ By the time you make a decision, based on what you know, the situation may have changed, and your decision may not fit the new conditions. Your business
