How To Lead

"There are a million ways to get things done and only one is you."(Photo Provided)So much has been written about “servant leadership” these days, that you might almost think it is a good working model. Rubbish! It is the lazy person’s approach to management. The concept is that the leader serves their team “like a servant,” asking what their needs are and then delivering them. This completely misses the point that most workers are unaware of what they need to focus on in order to be successful, and that they rely on their leader to tell them this.

If you are leading as a servant, you are acting as a servant. Ergo, you are not a leader, and this article is not titled “How to be a servant,” so we won’t continue down that path. I can’t think of anything working less for a leader than asking the team what they need from you. It doesn’t require knowing your people and their strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t require crafting thoughtful feedback to tell them where they did well and where they can do better. It doesn’t require creating a career path or job plan for them that allows them to excel at their strengths and mitigates their weaknesses. It doesn’t even require understanding the strategic direction of the company or its purpose, mission, or what it values. It doesn’t require any homework or preparation.

A real leader provides feedback, guidance, direction, training suggestions, and regular interactions around what they see in each team member and how their actions can be strengthened so as to deliver improved results and propel their career path at the company forward. That’s a lot of work. Don’t expect a “Servant Leader” to do it.

Right, having debunked that one, let’s look at other popular leadership models. How about the “Democratic Leader” model, defined as “involving group members in decision-making, being collaborative, having open communication, and valuing perspectives.” Surely, this is simply a part of any kind of “being a leader.” I am not about to advocate for the “Dictator as Leader” model, even if I think this country would be best run with me at the top, just telling everyone what to do.

Furthermore, when leaders are interviewed about their leadership style by famous magazines and business publications, they don’t actually tell the truth. None of them are going to say, “I treat my people like they are incompetent and stupid, and I hire consultants to run the company for me,” even if that is exactly what they do.

Another vaunted management style is “Management by Walking Around,” meaning the CEO walks around the factory floor or the office space talking with all the employees they encounter. This method wins much praise, but can cause absolute havoc. I know because I tried it. When I was running an audio tour company that did business in more than 50 countries, whenever I travelled, I would talk to the folks at the most junior levels. This was the folks handing out the tours in museums like the Louvre and Vatican. I would listen to all their complaints, diligently write them down, and then I couldn’t wait to bring up these issues with their managers when I next sat down with them, wanting to solve every problem. But I was the problem. Much of what I was told were very small issues and became blown out of proportion when I brought them up, distracting my managers from focusing on what they had deemed the key topics for the week or month. Suddenly, my execs felt they had to explain every tiny issue to me.

We love to give names to everything these days. Transactional leadership is focused on “spelling out tasks clearly.” But any leader should clearly explain tasks expected when there is a lack of clarity with the executor of the task, and not when they think the executor knows what to do to achieve the desired result.

Transformational Leadership “focuses on inspiring and motivating employees to achieve great results.” What, so other leadership styles can be great without motivating anyone who works there?

Bureaucratic Leadership focuses on “following the rules.” What leader is going to say, “Ah yes, I lead through bureaucracy”?

There’s Laissez-Faire Leadership which “gives a lot of autonomy to the team.” What does that even mean? Different teams need and should have different levels of autonomy, based on their skill-level and the work they are required to carry out. I consulted for one CEO who followed the Laissez-Faire model, and they had no idea how to guide their people. They constantly complained about what a bad job their executives were doing but added, “It’s not my fault because I left them alone and trusted them to do what was needed.”

A real leader leads through listening to their executives and others in order to set strategic direction (the final decision always being their own), and through problem-solving by listening to relevant internal parties who can help ensure the solution is thought through.

To complicate matters, leadership styles need to change based on the situation a company finds itself in. I always laugh when I am asked, “Are you a turnaround leader or a growth leader?” This question makes no sense at all. Either you can lead through a variety of situations, or you are not a leader. A company in turnaround is going to hopefully move to growth when the turnaround is complete. A growth company today can be a turnaround company tomorrow. You have to be able to lead through it all.

An Empathetic Leader that takes the time to listen to all the problems of their people, personal and professional, can, in certain situations, have no more value than being a nice guy and “crying with you at the bad things.” It can distract from all the actions necessary to move the company forward.

One CEO I worked for spent all his time trying to please the chairman who micromanaged every detail. We spent hours discussing board decks and whether the appropriate word for our growth statistics were “huge” or “large.” I would have gone for “based on the wrong metrics” myself.

Some CEOs work their people to death and consider that a great thing if they make a lot of money. Jack Welch (when he was considered an amazing leader before the revisionist history) said that his execs and senior team may have worked every Saturday, but he made them all into millionaires. I wonder if their kids consider that sacrifice worth it. Perhaps a little less money and being present every other Saturday?

Elon Musk talks all the time about how much he works and that he sleeps at his factories, but what happened to working smart instead of hard? If most people have been productive for eight hours a day between 9 and 5, they need a break until the next day. If they are working too hard to balance their lives, they will not balance their thinking, so their decision-making will be seriously, even fatally, flawed. A Workaholic Leader is not a healthy role model for the employees.

In truth, every leader is a mix of a variety of styles that are inherent to their nature and that they have found works for them. That’s how they got to lead and lead again.

In fact, one of the eight kinds of leadership folks talk about is Situational Leadership: adapting your style to the situation; being flexible and responsive to teams; and shifting styles based on people and priorities. This is the only leadership style that works because it is not a style, it is, simply, leading.

Basically, everything you read about how to lead is all nonsense except where it says, “Be you.” You don’t know how to be anyone else anyway. You cannot change your inherent personality, nor should you, nor follow some leadership style prescribed by others. Find an executive coach and tailor your personality around the edges (because you cannot and should not change who you are, obviously you got to where you are from being that person) to strengthen your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses – the latter, often through bringing others with balancing styles onto the team.