A Theory of Leadership
There are good leaders and bad leaders but invariably most are mediocre. Working for a good leader and leaving a bad leader are obvious decisions but the vast majority of subordinates are stuck tolerating mediocre leaders.
Like most mediocre leaders, you probably think you are a good leader. This is because everyone tells you so. Didn’t you deliver three products on time? Didn’t you get a chairman’s award for diversity initiatives or some other corporate BS? Didn’t you just beat all the damn metrics that no one really understands? Eventually, you believe it.
However, something always seems off. When you try to energize the team by telling them how excited you are and how this will be your best quarter, why the lukewarm response? Did that lady actually roll her eyes? Is the techie in the hoodie texting?
Why is your team afraid of you? When you say a friendly “hello”, why does your team pretend to look busy, carefully glancing to see if you are still around?
Why is it so hard to get anything done? Despite your mandate to reduce meetings, how does everything eventually get stuck in meetings for weeks and moves like a drunk snail going uphill?
Why are your best people showing lackluster enthusiasm? Why don’t they just understand how cool and important this project is? Why are they transferring to other teams? Why are they talking back?
The reasons for all the above is the same. You are a mediocre leader.
The crisis in leadership is a crisis of credibility. You have positional authority but no credibility. Credibility is key to leadership. Why don’t they see credibility in you? Perhaps because when you talk about a great quarter, they have heard the same speech four times before and nothing really changed. Or perhaps you announced there would be no layoffs and weeks later laid off half the team. If you can’t walk the talk, you have no credibility.
Perhaps you give constructive feedback (with the best intentions) but never take feedback. Or you ask people to cut down on meetings … and call meetings yourself. If you don’t hold yourself to the same standards you expect of others, you have no credibility.
Or your bursts of anger and need to put your foot down. Taking out your frustrations with your superiors on your subordinates. Missing meetings with your subordinates or being late. If you cannot manage yourself, you cannot manage others.
A more subtle principle is that your credibility is shaped disproportionately by your relationship with your best people. If you feel anxiety when they dissent, everyone in the room has sensed it and you just lost credibility. Or perhaps you are threatened by the possibility of your best people replacing you. Your best people are your generals. If you are not at ease with them, you will rarely win. Indeed, no Sovereign has ruled a large kingdom alone.
Fortunately, leadership is a skill that can be learnt. The prerequisites are a willingness to work on yourself and the right temperament. Over the years, I have developed a system that can be learnt and practiced. Some of it is from classical texts such as Sun Tzu’s “The art of War”, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and some other classics. The rest is from my observations about the best leaders and my own experimentations in leadership roles.
While true leadership is best absorbed as an apprenticeship, I hope that by writing here I can reach a broader audience.
Read the rest of the series:
The seven levels of Leadership
