On Real Leaders

Recently I noticed a local newspaper editor in an email blast bemoaning the fact that local political leaders weren’t following sunshine laws. My immediate reaction was, “Well, if they’re not following the law, and they’re elected officials, they’re not being very good leaders now, are they?”

I think most of us would agree that being elected or appointed or being put “in charge” of something or some people by virtue of your family ties or influential contacts doesn’t automatically make someone a leader. Being a leader to me has always meant something a lot more than being put in charge.

If you are truly leading, people are following, and ideally of their own volition. If not, then I have a very tough time calling someone like that a leader. A manipulator or a bully maybe? Or a bad boss, or even a tyrant? But not a leader. And I wouldn’t call someone breaking the law a leader at all.

As a kid, I very much saw my parents as “leaders.” My Dad was the rector of a church, and he was a community leader. People looked up to him and thought what he had to say was important. They listened to him and they followed his lead, willingly. That’s what leaders do. They connect with followers. My Mom was a leader, too. She managed the home front and the kids, and she did a fine job of it. We willingly followed her lead. She rarely had to coerce us in any way.

I remember clearly understanding that “Ike” Eisenhower was a good leader. People had a lot of respect for him. As I grew older though, I encountered people in positions of authority who weren’t leaders at all; people whose behavior repelled me like disengaged teachers, or mean coaches or a reactionary and belligerent head of a school. They were “in charge,” but it was pretty clear to me they weren’t leaders.

I developed a keen interest in leaders and leadership, and it was fed by my study of literature. I ended up being an English major and found lots in my studies that helped me understand leadership better. Shakespeare’s plays in particular have a lot to say about leadership; just check out Anthony and Cleopatra, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Richard III or Henry V. Oh, yeah, and Titus Andronicus is bloody good too, on the subject of leadership.

When I started working, leadership became an obsession for me. I’m a voracious reader, and in 40 years in business I estimate I read about 8–10 business books a year, most of them on management and leadership.

I read all the popular authors: Warren Bennis, Tom Peters, Steven Covey, John Maxwell, Daniel Goleman, Ken Blanchard, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Peter Drucker, Daniel Pink, Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell and more. I attended plenty of training and seminars that helped, and for years I subscribed to a monthly publication that dealt specifically with excellence in leadership. So I feel like I got to know the subject pretty well in the academic sense.

I worked with and for many different types of leaders and had an opportunity as a follower to observe, grasp and model what worked well. And I had plenty of opportunities to lead: people, departments, divisions, projects and companies.

I’ll not opine on my leadership, but I will assert that I think I got to know what good leadership is, and what it isn’t, particularly in the “textbook” sense, validated by plenty of my own real world observation, and trial and error. I made plenty of mistakes, and tried to learn from them.

So I studied hard what the great minds in business, politics and history had to say on the subject, and developed a pretty good ability to spot a real leader easily and quickly. The same was true for recognizing the opposite.

What follows then is what I know about real leaders. Effective leaders. Leaders that get positive results for the organizations and people they lead. There is a broad range of styles and personalities that real leaders exhibit, but I discovered over time that these central tendencies tend to consistently catalyze the best efforts of followers and create the synergies that routinely deliver optimum results.

My study and practical experience focused primarily on business, but I believe these concepts and traits apply in other endeavors as well. So here you go:

A real leader:

- Tells the truth, always, obsessively and compassionately in ways that people can integrate, even when it’s difficult or painful to hear. They are deeply honest people, too.

- Is emotionally intelligent. They understand themselves, the organization they lead and its people.

- Is more often than not a humble person, though remarkably accomplished.

- Is passionate, engaged and adaptable. They inspire their followers to excel.

- Remains calm when others are agitated.

- Is rarely the smartest person in the room. They surround themselves with exceptionally bright people that cover their gaps in knowledge and expertise.

- Assembles an amazing team.

- Creates an environment in which these bright people want to be as productive as they can possibly be.

- Is articulate. They communicate in ways people readily understand and can easily connect with. They speak in clear, concise and convincing ways that are felt by followers to be heartfelt, inclusive and empathetic.

- Is visionary. They see what the future can be and deliver plans to capitalize on it.

- Is invariably a good listener.

- Never reprimands, berates or embarrasses a follower publicly.

- Encourages disagreement and healthy debate.

- Models the behavior they expect to see in others. They establish standards of excellence to which their followers can aspire.

- Develops other real leaders.

- Believes and preaches continuous improvement and understands systems management.

- Sees mistakes, especially first time ones, as opportunities to improve.

- Does not tolerate incompetence, and doesn’t play or allow others to play political games.

- Evaluates people based on what they accomplish.

- Is continuously learning and improving their skill sets, and expects that other team members will do the same.

- Understands profit is not the goal but the reward for excellent performance.

- Takes good care of them-self. They know they are no good to anyone if they are stressed out, too tired, run down or sick.

- Manages time especially well.

- Intuitively trusts people, until proven wrong. If people are not trustworthy, they do not stay.

- Keeps their eye on the prize: mission, vision, values, goals and results.

- Stays focused on mission critical priorities and is wary of seductive distractions that obscure what is essential to success.

- Is reasonably consistent and predictable. They can be expected to speak and act with integrity.

- Tends to be an optimist and is uncomfortable with incessant cynics.

- Is the exact type of leader the organization must have to excel at that point in the organization’s life.

- Enjoys solving problems. They create an environment where problem solving is a cultural strength and bad news flows instantaneously to the top.

- Remains the leader and is not a buddy.

- Encourages followers to pursue excellence in all aspects of their varied lives, especially with their families.

- Absorbs the pain first in tough times.

- “Runs to the sound of the gunfire,” meaning they are out front when thing are bad. When things are good, they tend to hang back and give everyone else the credit.

- Has a sense of humor, and it’s a squeaky clean one that doesn’t demean people. Often, they can be mildly self-deprecating, which people tend to enjoy.

- Is perceived to be a normal and imperfect human being like everyone else, and as such does not attach them-self to the trappings of success or status, nor do they lord their status over others in the organization.

- Is slow to anger, or may not get angry at all, understanding that anger and fear are much the same emotion.

- Is not fearful of much, but is not oblivious to threats or arrogant either. They tend to focus on solutions, strategic responses and things that can be controlled and managed well.

Well, there you have it. That’s what I know to be true about real leaders. Certainly people can be in charge for some time and even be successful without all, most or any of these aspects. But I would submit to you that these people are outliers, or maybe the beneficiary of external conditions or the efforts of the real leaders in the organization.

It’s amazing to me how often exceptionally poor leaders are placed and sometimes inexplicably stay at the top of many organizations, especially when the truth of their lack of leadership is so obvious.

But that’s a subject for another day.

(Original artwork by J.E. Hargate)