Some Dogs Look Like Their Owners
What leadership is and why your business reflects your leadership style whether you want it to or not
I discovered the other day that there’s an entire online sub-culture dedicated to sharing candid snaps of dogs who look like their owners.
As a coach, speaker & business owner, I’ve met lots of organisational leaders and I think the same can be said for them.
Whether you like it or not, if you are a leader, your organisation will tend to represent your leadership style.
Unless you’re pretty senior and in a fairly big organisation that has structured training programmes, there’s a good chance you don’t even think about yourself as a ‘leader’.
So, if you are a leader (even if it is without knowing it), perhaps you should take a moment to think about what impression you are leaving on your followers – even if not deliberately.
It’s not about woolly jumpers and TV shows
Within small and medium-sized businesses, the term ‘leader’ actually seems a label that people are quite reluctant to use, which is hardly surprising. The glossy magazines have been pushing the ‘leader-as-celebrity’ for years.
We see pictures of Sir Richard Branson, or Donald Trump or Sheryl Sandberg on the covers of business magazines, and we feel that a true leader is an ego-driven, revolutionary, caricature.
And while there’s a lot to learn from (and aspire to) about those leaders, we’re perhaps more likely to think “I’m running a business with a 150 people in it, not Virgin or Facebook”, and the term leadership is left for those who are happier to be in the public spotlight.
The downside is this: If you don’t accept that you’re actually a leader, and actively shape and sculpt your leadership style, your organisation is likely to represent you – whether you like it, or not.
You see, there are a few fundamental truths about leadership:
- Even without the label of leadership to describe whatever this thing is, businesses will still take on their leaders’ personality and all the good (and not so good) things that involves
- People will still follow the person who provides them with leadership; Whether that’s who you want it to be, or somebody else who does this stuff better
- Customers will still be attracted to those businesses that have a clear focus and can get things done well, and on time.
In other words, the success of any organisation rests firmly on the quality of its leadership – so we might as well give a little thought to what leadership is.
What is a Leader?
One of my favourite academic books (Organizational Behavior, Robbins & Judge) has this definition:
Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or a set of goals.
I see where that’s coming from and it’s certainly useful, but it feels a little abstract. Perhaps one of the issues with an academic’s definition, is that they are probably the one group of people who don’t ever really need to do that much leading!
Business gurus also have lots to say about leadership, and tend to focus on comparisons between leadership and management, or between good and bad leadership. So you get this kind of thing, which is from John C. Maxwell, one of the writers I’ve found most useful:
The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.
Again, it makes some sense, but what if you’re in a job where you’re not the person in charge of deciding when to adjust the sails – does that say you’re not a leader? And if so, does that make you just a passenger on the boat?
My own definition of leadership is as flawed as all the others, and comes from years of just wanting to get stuff done, in big organisations, as well as really small ones, and from wanting to help other people who are also trying to make their business successful:
A leader is anybody who wants to do important stuff and needs other people to help
Decide for yourself how useful or otherwise you’d find my definition of leadership in running your own business or organisation. I’m going to leave the last word to somebody much wiser than me:
If you want to go fast,
Go alone.
If you want to go far,
Go together.
African proverb
