A Thought on Leadership

There is a myth about being a great leader that has permeated what many people associate with leadership.  Through many different training sessions for supervisors that I have done, I find it is common that people believe you have to be famous or have some major accomplishments under your belt to be a great leader.  In reality all you really have to do is treat those that you lead with dignity and respect.  An integral part of the formula for good leadership, as well as getting effective results from your team can be as simple as that.  While it is true that there are great leaders who have accomplished something major, it is not a pre-requisite for being a great leader.  It is also unnecessary to have a wall of awards and trophies to serve as a leader who people adore and have come to identify as a leader who has made a difference.  It might come with the territory that an award is granted, but all too often those in positions of leadership pressure themselves to meet an imagined and arbitrary standard of being an awarded leader before they focus on how they treat those that they lead.

Let me walk you through a brief exercise I’ve done during a supervisor training session to illustrate what I’m talking about.  Try to name the past 5 Super Bowl MVP winners.  Try to name the past 3 Miss Universe winners. Try to name the last 4 Nobel Peace Prize Award winners.  Last but not least name the last 4 Oscar Winners for Best Director.

Now try to name 5 people who have been supportive of you.  Try to name 3 people who are great listeners.  Try to name 4 people whose honesty serves as a role model for you. Try to name 4 people who you’ve watched be kind to others regularly.

The first set of lists is remarkably more difficult.  Through that process we are listing people based on their awards, and while they have achieved some really amazing things, we do not remember them for their awards.  We do however remember people who have touched our lives in meaningful ways, and been there for us.  What’s more remarkable is that the traits they conveyed and are remembered for are traits that we generally associate with describing a good leader. 

The flipside is that as a good leader the respect from those you lead is commonly what resonates as more rewarding.  A recent example of this is listening to someone like Tom Brady who is a very accomplished quarterback in the NFL for the New England Patriots.  Recently he addressed college football players at the University of Michigan where he played as a quarterback.  He told these players that the accomplishment he was most proud of were not his Super Bowl rings, or a Super Bowl MVP award, but that his teammates voted him captain of the team in college.  He had earned the respect of his teammates and they looked up to him enough to select him to be their representative and leader.

This is exactly the crux of the matter.  Being a good leader is something that is earned from those that you lead.  Accomplishments while great and fantastic do not by default make someone a good leader.  Instead it is the way you treat those that you lead that make you a good leader.  Someone cannot be a leader without followers in any environment (work, sports team, volunteering, etc.).  The best way to be a memorable leader, as well as an effective one, is to be someone that people admire for the way that they treat their followers.  Just like in the exercise above, would you rather have someone struggle to remember you because of an award you won, or would you rather be someone who is easy to recall because you treated those you lead in a way that they appreciated?  It is in the latter where good leaders are created and how they earn the respect of those that they lead.

Who Are You?

Who am I?  It’s a question that many people have asked themselves in many scenarios you can conjure up in your imagination.  Through my own recent observations of people interacting, I have found that we are often stuck in defining ourselves by our jobs and judging others by theirs.  If you’ve ever heard any of the following feel free to just nod your head:

“You’re only ever going to get a job at McDonalds.” – As a motivation to a student to study harder.

“I’m the new Chief Executive Officer.  You should listen to what I have to say.” – As a boss exerts himself without gaining loyalty through trust from their employees first.

“You’re a stay at home Mom? You mean you don’t work? What do you do?” –As one condescending person talks to a stay at home mom in a store with her kids.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not ignorant to the plethora issues at play in the statements above which involve privilege, socio-economic status, sexism, and the like.  You can believe that the role of intersectionality in these also is not lost on me.  There are plenty of other blog posts where I can address those.  At this moment I’m focusing on the common denominator of using employment as a label for a person’s worth, or your own self-worth.  I’ve been noticing the frequency of this recently, and I have experienced it in my own life.  There is no shame in any of those jobs listed, but as a society we have attached a specific judgment and value to each one of those titles.   

As I’ve networked with people in different situations, I’ve noticed that when meeting someone new “What’s your name?” is naturally the first question (which makes perfect sense).  However the common quick follow up question is “What do you do?”.  This post isn’t to berate you if you’ve ever done this because believe me I’m just as guilty of asking this.  We typically use this second question because it is an easy and safe question to come up with right away in a conversation to break the ice.  But think about the stereotypes that quickly flood our minds as soon as someone says what they do.  Think about the jobs I mentioned above and what came to mind as you read each one.  Sometimes this can shut down what was once an open communication line, or creates less of a desire to get to know someone.  Even a good natured and kind hearted person has certain assumptions that come to mind when someone mentions that they do a specific job.  Let’s be honest with ourselves, it’s simply human nature to paint a mental picture.  It’s what you do with that picture and how you treat that person that makes a difference.   

In addition to this, quite often (I’ve been guilty of this too, and aim to work on it) that we have so much pride in our job that we proudly share our title as if it was printed in 24k gold lettering on a huge marquee.  Not only do we do this, but our family members and friends will boast about how they know the ‘so and so’ at ‘such and such’ to feel some sort of high status by association in a social situation.  Is there anything inherently wrong about this? No, not exactly.  If it is in the intention of networking it is safe, but when it becomes bragging it’s trouble.  The opposite happens if someone is unemployed or doesn’t feel their job is prestigious.  They will by shy to mention or fumble around saying what they do.  If we rely too heavily on that job title to determine our self-worth we can easily lose a sense of self.  This loss is not only among family and friends but in the job we do as well.

If you ever talk to, or read about anyone who has achieved greatness in any field they will tell you that they never lost a sense of who they were, and were able to bring that sense of self to whatever they were doing.  After some time, this allowed for creative ideas to emerge creating change, or for their character to be noticed and rewarded with bonuses/merit pay, or even for them to create their own business and follow a passion.  The common denominator is that they didn’t get caught up in a title of being powerful and defining themselves by WHAT they did and instead stayed true to themselves and focused on WHY they did it.

If we allow ourselves to be defined by what we do, we can easily lose a sense of why we are doing something and subsequently get sucked into a situation where we are doing it just for the money, not truly serving the people that we are supposed to, or making decisions in a selfish manner that only benefits ourselves.  In addition to this why define yourself by only one label?  There are many other aspects of your life that make up who you are.  Not only one label defines everything about you, so why would you willingly seize the opportunity to let your job define you. 

A common interview question is “What can you add to the team if we hire you?”.  On the spur of the moment the answer rolls off your tongue with ease sharing all the great talents you have and how you can be special wowing the interviewer.  Shortly after the hire letter, and the honeymoon of a new job is over, what was mentioned in that answer gets lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday work.  Well don’t let that happen!  You’re selling yourself and everyone around you short.  Bring all parts of yourself to your position and exert yourself as not just the CEO, the worker at McDonalds, or the stay at home mom.  You are a person who is dynamic and you should live your life as that dynamic person in all that you do.  To do anything different is to cheat yourself, and to cheat this world of your greatness.

As the song goes: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”  So I urge you…“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”