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Does Your Leadership Suck?

Excuse the title, but yesterday, I was tagged by John W. McKenna to answer his challenge to write my views on the current state of leadership. To be honest, I wasn’t going to write anything since I am not a “leadership guy” and because I have no interest in telling other people how to become leaders.

And I don’t buy the whole leader-follower dichotomy that holds the leader 100% responsible for the failings his or her followers. Many things are not in any leader’s ability to control. And I also don’t believe that the human condition has changed oh so much in all these years and the short answer to John’s challenge is that leadership is in the state it’s always been in—a state of flux. No better and no worse than it has been.

But I thought it might be worth it to just to share my personal opinions on leadership and use some of my personal experiences as a guide for those of you out there who are trying to be better leaders.

But I have to say something very important first.

With all the books on leadership, why don’t we have a book on “follower-ship”. Seriously. You know who gets blamed when things go wrong. But isn’t it just as important to learn how to follow orders or operate under someone without voluntarily giving up your brain so that you can claim you were “just following orders” when things go wrong. And how many times have we all seen things go wrong not from a failure in leadership but in a failure of a team to execute? We can blame it all on the leader (that’s what the leader-follower dichotomy expects of us) but I think the followers need to take some personal responsibility for their own failings.

Joh wanted me to post on the current state of leadership. But the truth is I think that the quality of leadership also depends upon a person’s ability to follow.

I do believe that to be a good leader, you must learn to follow, or as the old saying goes:

“You have to first learn to kiss ass before you can kick it.”

Now here are a few points where I’ve seen failures in leadership:

#1 Inflexibility

Ever heard of Bill Parcells, the football coach? He’s quite famous for his “style”. The only problem is that after a few years, he wears thin on the teams he’s coached. Many people swear by Bill—he won a couple of Super Bowls 20 years ago. Lately? Nada.

But at the risk of alienating football fans out there, Bill needed to adjust his style for a while now. I think leaders have to adapt to the style of their teams.

I taught children some years back. And teachers are leaders. The first year I don’t think I was very good. I couldn’t quite figure out where I was going wrong. Then it hit me. I was treating all my classes the same. I taught form Kindergarten to Middle School kids. Kindergarten worked great. The rest not so great.

So, I started taking on different roles for the different classes. For one class, I was the stern teacher. For another class, I was a facilitator. For one exceptionally bright class, I was more of an active participant.

I assumed different roles to fit the students rather than asking the students to change to fit me. And I think this kind of flexibility is necessary.

#2 Fear of not being liked

This was my biggest personal failings. I always want people to like me. I mean, who likes it when people talk bad about you? But the truth is a leader doesn’t need to be liked, per se (although many can and certainly are liked). A leader needs to be respected.

And I have found that the nicer you are to people, the more they will take. Does this mean you have to be hard? Not at all.

Recently, I have been given some heavy responsibilities in my current. I have wondered why a certain project I am working on has not done so well in the past. And the first thing I realized was that the person put in charge looks almost afraid to give an order.

Of course, it doesn’t help that she is treated more as a co-worker than a leader. I really like this team I work with. But nothing was getting done. So, I just developed a system and told them what I wanted done. I give them reasonable deadlines and clear instructions. And guess what? They did a kick-ass job.

I used to be terrified of giving an order. And most likely, it’s why I was never viewed as a candidate for advancement in my job in the past. But now, it’s different. Because I focus more on results now and I seriously got rid of my over-inflated ego, I find it easier to give orders and I find the team follows them. And when the results are good, everyone is happy.

There is a possibility always that they will not like me or get angry at me sometimes. But we’re all adults. And if people don’t like me because I asked them to do their job, it’s their problem not mine. But I might add, everyone loves me…so far.

# 3 Leaders trying to think for others

As I talked before about a lack of follower-ship, I think that some people just want a “leader” to let them use their brains instead of trying to be their brains. Some “leaders” were once great followers in the sense that they were detail-oriented, worked hard, and went above and beyond the call of duty.

But 9 times out of 10, when these people are promoted, they have a tendency to want to do everything themselves. Delegation? What’s that?

Most people are reasonably intelligent. Tr4eating them like idiots only turns them into idiots.

You are the Owner of Your Own Existence; The Leader of Your Life’s Journey

Well, that’s my take on leadership. I do believe that within us all lies qualities that can be used to make us better leaders. But the person we must lead first is ourselves. By concentrating on our own development, we are taking ownership of our lives. And to me the worst leadership failure we could ever encounter is failing to lead ourselves down our own path and rather letting others dictate where we go.

Once you make that choice to lead your life and not your life lead you—you are free. Free to exist on your own terms. And there’s no greater feeling than that.

Did you find this helpful? Consider buying me a cup of coffee.

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