1. Introduction Three Principles of Leadership

1. Introduction - Three Principles of Leadership

All right, so let's start our conversation about leadership with something nice and easy. All right, so let's start our conversation about leadership with something nice and easy. Let's try to talk about some simple but important principles of leadership: let’s say three principles. If I tell you that leadership is important, that's not hugely surprising. It doesn't blow your hair back. It's not a huge revelation. But we know that in all sections of society that's something that people say is critical. But we know that in all sections of society that's something that people say is critical. If global CEOs are surveyed, they usually say that's the key to their company's success. Nonprofit leaders and civic leaders also say we need leadership for positive change, Nonprofit leaders and civic leaders also say we need leadership for positive change, societally, economically, etc. The question that I want to raise with you is, what is it exactly when we ask about leadership? The question that I want to raise with you is, what is it exactly when we ask about leadership? What is it that we want? I brought a few pictures of leaders here to get us in the right mindset to think about this. Hey, I see that you didn't bring a picture of Steve Jobs here, why? Yeah good point. So as a teacher of leadership, of course, I always carry a picture of Steve Jobs with me so we can include him. If you think about these arguably great leaders, what makes them great? What are the qualities that stand out and if you're watching this, you can think about what you associate with great leaders. They were visionaries. Charismatic to motivate other people. That's important. They brought up talents. Yep, different kinds of talents, possibly.
They really revolutionized the field they were in. Transformational leaders, yeah.
And there is also some emotional intelligence, probably. Yeah. Okay. We can find a number admirable qualities. If somebody brought us a dictionary, we could be sitting here all week coming up with wonderful words that describe good effective leaders.
The question though is do they all have those qualities in common? What do you think? Not for sure. I wasn't thinking about Steve Jobs when I said emotional intelligence. He had, I never met the guy, but he had a reputation for actually being irritable to some degree, actually being irritable to some degree, not being particularly nice sometimes to employees so emotional management was maybe not one of his strengths, but he was extremely charismatic, and that inspired a lot of people. Maybe Mother Theresa’s a little less charismatic. Yeah, but she was still effective leader despite that. She inspired people through other ways. The point is nobody can be all those things. Nobody can have all of those wonderful virtuous qualities together. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is Superman. Heck, even Superman is not an ideal leader. He's not that great at empathy and relating to others. He's an alien for crying out loud!
The first principle that we can that we can identify then is that there’s no standard formula. There’s no standard recipe for leadership. All leaders basically develop their own style.When I say that leaders develop their own unique style that doesn’t mean that they’re not facing similar challenges. That doesn’t mean that they’re not facing similar challenges. They all, to some degree, have to motivate others. As you said, Nick, they have to develop talent, they have to align people, make tough decisions in some cases, but they do that with responses that have to be developed, that work for them, that over time become uniquely their own, that become habits in a way. Those responses also are often effective, not in isolation, but because of the other things that they do as well. We said Steve Jobs might not have been the pinnacle of emotional intelligence, but he did a lot of other things that counterbalance that, that made him an effective leader. Josh, you might be fantastic at giving inspirational speeches, Josh, you might be fantastic at giving inspirational speeches, People might look at that and say, “oh, so that’s his secret, right?”So we all have to give more inspirational speeches but what actually might make him effective is that he actually also devises feasible plans of implementing things, and following up with people. Matching the right talent to the right task and all that. Right? Which is less visible, but that’s really how you become effective, right, this portfolio of things that you do. So that means that we don’t want to look at those individual traits. We don’t want to copy those individual practices. That’s almost terribly obvious, right? Don't just copy other leaders. If you think about what 50% maybe 70% of the leadership literature is about, right? The six habits of, highly effective people, or level five leadership, or the GE way, or the Richard Branson way, or whatever else. They often encourage those to actually look at others and, take them as an example.
The, “we can learn by example” But I think the lessons should be a little bit more general. That maybe you don’t copy a particular practice or a particular system of leadership. But that it’s helpful to have a system, in the first place: To have a leadership philosophy. You need an inspiration, maybe off the beaten track. Maybe that’s important for leaders. That doesn’t mean that you have to take calligraphy lessons like Steve Jobs did, maybe that’s not your thing. So the lessons are a little bit more more general.The off shoot is trying to find your own style, Try to find your own voice. Now does that mean that you should simply be yourself? Yeah, That seems pretty necessary. Right? No. No. No. Well, if that were true actually, everyone could be a leader. Yeah.You still have to to work on the best version of yourself. You still have to work as a leader to develop your competencies. So just kind of relaxing, leaning back that’s, for very few of us that’s a recipe for success.All right so we know that leaders develop different responses to challenges, maybe uniquely their own, but is there something they do have in common? Is there something we can identify? Yeah they’re all widely revered. Widely revered. They all have followers. Yeah, they all have followers. So that’s the one characteristic, right? Peter Drucker you know, famously said once, the only characteristic that leaders have in common is that they have followers.It makes sense. Leaders depend on their followers. If we think about Napoleon, for example, could he have done what he has done without his marshals? Of course not. No. Of course not. No way. Right? His marshals, if you look at them, they were brilliant military minds in their own right. Very capable administrators that, that managed these hugely complex logistics of the, of the military campaign. They were very loyal, most of them. And yes so that he relied on them. The French Empire relied on them. They were the pillars of the French Empire. And we also forget about them. Because we don’t have time to think about anymore than one heroic leader. So the followers are very important. And we see that pattern occur again and again.
You probably know of the book Team of Rivals about Abe Lincoln, right? And his political leadership. We see it there as well, right? He got people around him that he could rely on that supported him and challenged him. So he again, really relied on his followers. We can think about Steve Jobs. “Marshals” if you like, right? All brilliant minds of their own. There is Jony Ive for design, Phil Schiller for marketing, or Tim Cook, as he was Head of Operations. So leaders depend on their followers and of course followers depend on their leaders. So our second principle would be, leaders and followers are in an interdependent relationship.Leaders and followers depend on one another. Let’s think about how they actually depend— how do followers depend on their leaders? What do they need from their leaders? What do you think? For sure, the direction and guidance. Yeah, motivation and inspiration. Exactly. Yeah. Someone to make the difficult decisions. Yeah, in some cases, right? But not in all cases. When we say that followers depend on their leaders, the doesn’t mean that they are helpless. In many cases they make decisions on their own. They’re not sheep. They give a certain amount of the agency, not all of the agency to leaders cause they expect that they actually get something for them. They get better outcomes. Because they get guidance or because they get more motivation because of that. How do leaders depend on their followers?
It depends on their skills. And expertise. Skills and expertise, yeah. Followers can provide feedback for leaders. Very important. That’s sometimes difficult to get, honest feedback, if you’re a leader. Leaders can’t be everywhere at once, so they need their followers to be their eyes and ears. Exactly, right. So you can’t be attending to everything so you need that, you need those to help you with that. Exactly. So those are if you like the exchanges that happen between followers and leaders.So let’s dwell on this, this relationship aspect a bit more right between leaders and followers. When you think about relationships generally speaking, what is required for a healthy productive relationship? What do you say? Well I really need some trust. Some trust. Good. They also have to get along. There, there has to be chemistry. Exactly, there has to be some kind of fit, right? Both parties need to figure out what they want from the other. What can I contribute to the relationship? Yeah. And that brings us in a way back to the principle number one, where you need to figure out your own unique style your contribution. What can you do that really helps others? Often it is not that you take charge and set direction and all that but, it actually can be that as a leader, you create an environment that allows others to be effective, creative, and find the right way for the future. Sim Sitkin has a great example. He teaches at Duke University. Teaching the U.S. it needs to be a sports example.
There’s an NBA player, Shane Bettier. If you look at the stats he is not exceptional in terms of shots or assists or blocks.But he by far better than all star players in making sure that his team overall performs better when he’s on court than when he is not on court. There’s something, some voodoo, some magic that he does, that makes that team perform. And Sim takes that as a kind of cue and says that’s something very important to teach leaders. To be aware of as leaders. Is that we need to be able to channel the talents the energies, the, the genius of others That’s the meta talent. It doesn’t mean that it’s a more important or better talent because it’s completely useless if there are no other talents around. If you’re the only one who can manage them. It’s a contribution to focus on as a leader. To bring those talents together. There’s one more meta-talent that I want to highlight. Let’s say that, Nick is great at encouraging people to be creative to think outside the box. He does that very consistently, very effectively. But let’s imagine he does that a little bit too consistently. Everytime people come to you as a leader, to get advice, we need to revise our job policy which would be to. I would say think outside the box. Exactly. Customers aren’t happy, our service sucks. Think outside the box again. Again, yes. Exactly. You can’t be a one-trick pony as a leader. There might be one thing that you do exceptionally well, but you need you need to be adaptive. You need to be able to respond depending on what your followers require. Different people need different things, different situation require different responses. That's why I don't like strongly normative leadership models too much: be it inspirational leadership or emotional intelligence based leadership or transformational leadership because in some situations that is required and some situations it might not be. So you need to be adaptive, ultimately. But isn't the focus on the relationship between the leaders and the followers normative in itself? Yeah, a little bit. In a good way. It's still pretty flexible. It still allows for a lot of room, but the focus on relations, ultimately, is just saying, don't just think of the issues, also think of the people and the relationship that you have with your followers, right? Whatever you do inside that it allows for many different leadership styles and approaches It is very adaptive. Let's think about that as our third principle: Is that leaders need to be adaptive. That's why I don't like strongly normative leadership models too much: be it inspirational leadership or emotional intelligence based leadership or transformational leadership because in some situations that is required and some situations it might not be. So you need to be adaptive, ultimately. But isn't the focus on the relationship between the leaders and the followers normative in itself? Yeah, a little bit. In a good way. It's still pretty flexible. It still allows for a lot of room, but the focus on relations, ultimately, is just saying, don't just think of the issues, also think of the people and the relationship that you have with your followers, right? Whatever you do inside that it allows for many different leadership styles and approaches It is very adaptive. Let's think about that as our third principle: Is that leaders need to be adaptive. They need to be flexible to be able to respond to different circumstance different challenges. This is something that people expect from you, right? That you can especially handle never before encountered situations. Or you can't just say that sorry that's not my area of speciality anymore. They expect some kind of guidance. Not necessarily a solution But some kind of some kind of guidance. For that you want that portfolio of competencies.Doesn’t mean that you are embracing every flavor of the month leadership technique that goes to the press? Rather, you build some breadth. I like this idea of a T profile. You might have heard of a T profile before. You have one, the vertical part, specialty. One thing that you do exceptionally well. But you also have this horizontal part, the generalist skills That allow you to be adaptive. That's a good asset to have. We started by raising the question of, what is that leadership that we want We saw that it's very difficult actually, to pin down to define exactly. But we try to identify some, some principles that are helpful for leaders to keep in mind. As they develop own leadership competencies: Principle number one: if you recall it. No standard formula and have your own style. Exactly, that should encourage you to to be reflective To look and say to yourself be a reflective practitioner as we call it.To figure out what is it you can contribute, what is your unique contribution what are your strengths and maybe what do you want to develop further as competencies. Okay, principle number one. Principle number two? Interdependency. Be aware of the relationship with the, between the leader and the followers. Exactly. Make that relationship, keeping that relationship in mind is, is a good foundation. It also keeps you humble It protects you from that egomania that leaders might, you know might get. “I am the leader.” “I am doing all the important things here.” If you focus on that inter-dependence, you realize that the followers are contributing really important things. You are channeling that in a way. I think that's a good thing, having that humility. And then our third principle was? You have to adapt to different situations so you cannot always have the same approach. Be flexible, don't be a wandering pony.So that should encourage you to, to stretch to learn, to to push outside of your comfort zone, in the way that you can try new things to broaden your repertoire. Now all these three principles are, are good, general orientations for, for leadership behavior. They're also good behaviors to model for others. If you think about it. The figuring out what you can contribute. What your strengths are. Focusing on relationships and, and being adaptive. That's something that's good for followers too So you model that behavior that's really helpful. And before I make things more complicated and think about the, the international inter-cultural challenges. We can say with a good amount of confidence that those principles are universally applicable It doesn't matter where you operate as a leader under which circumstances.