Take Me To Your Leader

I don’t know if there’s something in the air, in the water, in the state of the world, or what. But it seems as if everybody and his brother — along with most of their distant relatives — are calling themselves leaders, writing about leadership, or both these days. People calling themselves leaders and/or writing about leadership are increasing in frequency and volume in inverse proportion to the crises we face due to the catastrophic dearth of leadership in the world, in business, and in politics.

But this is not a new phenomenon. It’s just an accelerated one. Consider this one example from business: A little more than seven years ago, Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article — “Managing a Team That’s Been Asked To Do Too Much” — that still sticks in my craw. In the interest of brevity, I’ll cite only one excerpt from the article:

If we examine each of those three sentences, we’ll find faulty logic, as well as the perennial failure to distinguish leadership from management:

• As a manager, you have a responsibility to ensure that unreasonable targets don’t unleash harmful behaviors on your team. If you’re a manager, it’s the responsibility of your leadership to ensure you’re not given unreasonable targets to manage. And if you’re overwhelmed, it’s the responsibility of your leadership to listen to your concerns and to discuss your suggestions for resolving them.
• When those above you fail in their leadership obligations, the responsibility falls to you. Are managers responsible for giving leaders hall passes or get-out-of-jail-free cards? People who put their managers on untenable hooks aren’t leaders. They’re charlatans at best, grifters at worst. But they’re definitely not leaders.
• If you receive a target for your team that you believe is unattainable, it’s your responsibility to share your concerns. This is where that seldom-acknowledged difference between management and leadership becomes most crucial. If you’re a manager — and if the target for your team is unattainable — you’re likely working for a charlatan or a grifter. Either way, if you share your concerns, you’ll be on the fast track to the unemployment line. So, if you’re a manager, manage yourself out of that company and into another one with a real leader.

I can’t say I’m surprised that article ran in HBR. But no leaders worth their salt or worthy of the title would put managers in those positions. No managers with any experience, self-respect, or boundaries would stick around to tolerate the imposition of those harmful behaviors, the assumption of responsibilities accruing from a failure of leadership, or the assigment of consistently unattainable targets. And things have only gotten worse since HBR published that article.

When in Doubt, Simplify

I’m generally not a chart kind of guy. But there are times at which things can be broken down more simply clearly with visual aids, as we say in the biz. As it turns out, this is one of those times.

I’ve taken the liberty of using some mind-mapping software to create the Graphic Below. (I’d have labeled it Figure 1. But there’s no Figure 2. So, that seemed rather pointless.) As you’ll see, it shows Leaders, Managers, and Employees, along with five corresponding responsibilities for each. Some folks have trouble with the notion that getting out of the way is a responsibility of leaders and managers, but it is. Otherwise, they’re in the way. And they foster organizations that can’t get out of their own way because they don’t grant employees the authority that should correspond to their responsibilities. It’s called Junction Dysfunction©* because things like workflow, decision-making, and continuity break down at the points at which they should be flowing most smoothly.

If you want to assume a leadership position — even if that means you’re the member of a team, leading by example and doing good, conscientious work, regardless of your title or position — three qualities are prerequisite: Self-faith. Determination. Thick skin. Beyond having those qualities, you’ll have to find a way to reconcile yourself to these 10 realities:

1. Integrity and karma are inseparable.
2. There’s nothing you can do to make small minds big.
3. Those most likely to preach change are the least likely to change.
4. Some people are more comfortable being right than being successful.
5. People will reject your best work as offhandedly as they reject your worst.
6. Some people will know they need help, ask for it, pay for it, then refuse to take it.
7. Those least likely to accept your judgment are most likely to blame you for their failure.
8. Regardless of how much thought you give something, people will assume you gave it none.
9. The better you are at something, the easier it is for people to believe they can do it themselves.
10. People never know what they want, but they always know they don’t want what you’ve done as soon as you do it.

Those realities suggest two other things legitimate leaders bring to the table, even — or especially — if they don’t lead anyone but themselves: integrity and accountability. I believe they have a cause-and-effect relationship with each other; that is, integrity breeds accountability.

Speaking of integrity, at times, given the strategic role I frequently play with my clients, I end up acting as a kind of professional conscience (or trouble-maker — the terms are now synonymous); although, it becomes more and more difficult to find people who care anything for that which might come to pass after tomorrow or beyond the ends of their noses. In a recent meeting, I let slip the word, integrity, unwittingly causing a stampede for dictionaries the likes of which hadn’t been witnessed since Uncle Tex flicked an errant cheroot into the Roman candles during one particularly disastrous cattle drive. All the cows came back eventually; but the way Uncle Tex told it, “After that, even fireflies made them dogies jitterier ‘n heck!”

A Word About Culture

If you’re in a leadership position, it’s only a matter of time before the term, culture, is bandied about. Given that, please be aware: Like accountability, culture is an effect. It’s not a cause. It’s the result of leadership style — of the integrity you demonstrate, the accountability you take, and the respect you give. It’s a product of the environment you create. Treat people like capable human beings and give them the decision-making authority that corresponds to their responsibilities, and you have one kind of culture. Treat people like inept children and micromanage them, and you’ll have a different kind of culture. You decide which is better. If you choose correctly, you’re a leader. If you choose incorrectly, good luck.

While you’re deciding, you might bear one other leadership attribute in mind: humility. Here’s a test: If you treat people like inept children and aren’t mindful of the fact that you (or a manager you deputized to do it) hired them, you might want to consider becoming a plumber in a solo practice. If you don’t have the humility to recognize what happens on your watch, you don’t have the humility to lead anyone or anything, with the possible exceptions of a plunger or a drain snake.

One More Thing

No search for leadership was or ever will be rewarded by looking outside of ourselves. That’s what Sheldon Kopp meant by, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” To put it another way, as it pertains to our ability to lead ourselves — if you don’t bring it, it ain’t here.

If we all had that ability to lead ourselves — the self-faith to think critically, to be curious, to trust our own senses, to draw our own conclusions, and to remain open-minded enough to allow those conclusions to be challenged and amended — we wouldn’t be so gullible and impressionable. And we wouldn’t have made faux religions of politics, climate, technology, and the narrative trappings of other agendas, schemes, superficiality, and subterfuge.

If you don’t have a vision — a dream or an aspiration that will inspire people to help you bring it to fruition — you’re better off working for someone else, investing in that plumbing equipment, or just staying home.

We have to get real about leaders and leadership, kids. Ain’t nobody gonna save us. And there ain’t no panaceas.

Do the work or fuggedaboudit.

* Junction Dysfunction is a copyright of Leaders Under No Cockamamie Hypotheses (LUNCH). All rights reserved.