The Definitive Answer to the Most Effective Personality for True Leadership
Buckle up buttercup. It’s probably not what you expect.
One of my coworkers, Jim, had a real issue. His mentor at work, Maria, was a charming, outgoing, and effective leader; but he was a shy introvert.
** Side note: Jim and Maria are pseudonyms. This true story is not about anyone I have worked with named Jim or Maria. Chill Jim, chill.**
Jim told Maria that one of his goals was to become a better leader. She took up the challenge with enthusiasm because she believed in him.
Maria spent the next few months teaching Jim everything she knew about how to be a leader. She coached him to be friendly with everyone, remembering names, pets, holidays. She taught him how to bring up his energy levels so he could enter a conference room with the same impact she did. She showed him how to get comfortable being in the spotlight, the natural place for a leader.
None of it worked. When I left the company, Jim — despite being a totally capable person with all the potential of becoming a great leader — was worse at leadership than when he started trying to learn. Not only that, his confidence was shattered.
What went wrong?
Leadership isn’t a personality formula.
I eventually moved on from that company but never forgot Jim. Why didn’t Maria’s coaching work for him? I watched this similar story play out time and time again throughout my career. It drove me to spend a significant amount of time figuring out the elements of classic leadership and organizational performance theories that actually helped drive real change and the ones that were just hot air. Experiences with people like Jim and Maria helped me assess what works and what doesn’t. But Jim’s story was a tough one to figure out because he was learning from Maria, one of the best leaders on that team. In theory, Jim should have been able to learn leadership from Maria without a hitch.
This was when it dawned on me that leadership isn’t about personality. Maria had the best of intentions, but the way she was attempting to teach Jim leadership would never have worked.
It’s not surprising that Maria took the approach she did. She, like so many other successful leaders, honed their leadership skills over time, through lots of trial and error, and without a clear playbook. How, then, can she summarize and teach what she’s learned through years of trial and error? Her extremely common approach to coaching was to identify the most tangible differences between her leadership style and Jim’s approach.
Moreover, our culture and media are filled with examples of spotlighting leadership as a personality trait that looks more like Maria’s personality. Whether it’s Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, Harry Potter, or Daenerys Targaryen from the Game of Thrones, we frequently see the naturally charming and confident leaders effortlessly navigate the challenges they face.
Back to Jim, who didn’t exactly identify with our iconic fictional leaders. Despite what pop culture tells us, that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn to be a great leader. He was just being taught the wrong way.
To be a leader, lean into your authenticity.
Let’s break down what went wrong in my earlier example. Why did Maria’s awesome leadership style not work for Jim?
First, Maria was an excellent leader; and she happened to be outgoing, charismatic, charming, and extroverted. Jim could have been an excellent leader — but with different traits.
Maria shined at being a leader when she expressed interest in everyone, becoming their friend as well as the boss, which helped Maria bring people along with her ideas and plans. For Jim, that would have felt insincere. It wasn’t him, and people could tell. The goal of leadership is to bring people on a journey with you, so Jim needed to find a way to do it in a manner that worked with his personality.
Maria was great at taking credit for her ideas. Her comfort zone was the spotlight. But for Jim, that would have been a difficult path. Instead of trying to be like Maria, Jim could have leveraged his natural style while helping his followers get their moment in the spotlight. It’s not how Maria did it, but it definitely works.
During my years of studying leadership, I learned the surprising truth: whether you’re leading yourself or you’re a CEO of a company of thousands, effective leadership has very little to do with your personality.
More importantly, people crave authenticity. If you attempt to tweak your personality in an attempt to be more influential or effective, it will likely backfire. Your natural traits will eventually emerge, and those who you are trying to influence will sense the inconsistency. This can create trust issues and put your ability to generate the influence you desire at risk: the exact opposite of your goal.
The components of Maria’s successful leadership that she never shared with Jim included the time she spent analyzing and determining the best approach to solve her most critical issues — and the time she spent ensuring that people who were important to her plan were aligned with it. She also never shared how the time she invested to find the right approach helped her navigate the inevitable challenges that arose. She was determined, confident, and steadfast because she did her homework — not because of her personality.
The next time you are looking to emulate a mentor, consider what they are doing. Seek to understand the things they do that you might not see. I promise, that will help you so much more than trying to understand how they are doing it.
The act of leading happens when you develop a great idea, a clear plan, and put in the work to make it happen as you nurture your connections with the people you need support from. That’s it! Once you implement your great idea, you’re a leader.
As humans, we like to put things in boxes with neat labels, which is why leadership can be so hard to grasp. We want to believe either some people have it in them or they don’t. We want to think there’s one way to become a leader, that there’s just one way leaders look and act. It’s a lot easier to try personality hacks than spending time really assessing how to drive a real improvement and then putting in the hard work to implement the change.
The sooner we can step away from that myth, the sooner real leaders can step up and start changing the world, one person at a time.
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