Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters
Bob Dylan
How often have you heard that confidence and getting things done are definitional leadership qualities?
Here is the scene. You are in an audience listening to a dynamic speaker who prances across the stage, mic in hand, full of zeal and conviction. She is preaching the gospel of leadership, and you and your fellow audience members are her latest apostles-in-training. She is making some sense, but you have little time to process what she is saying before she excitedly jumps to the next point and then the next. Her rapid-fire delivery soon overwhelms your brain, inducing a passive state as you absorb her litany. The energy in the room is crackling. It’s almost unbearable.
And then she says it. Enunciating the words like they are part of an elaborate incantation: “Confidence is the foundation of leadership.” At that moment, your critical thinking skills, which had been taking a little smoke break in the alleyway, kick back in: “Is that true? Is confidence so vital to being a leader?” But before you can fully contemplate her statement, she releases another zinger with all the fervor of a gospel singer: “Leaders are the ones who get thing done.”
Now your critical skills come sharply awake, and you think, “What? What does that mean? That’s just dumb.” Unlike you, though, the audience — in a collective stupor — enthusiastically nods and applauds.
You have probably heard it from countless self-appointed leadership gurus. One of the key leadership qualities, sometimes described as the main one, is confidence. You have also heard them say that leaders are people who get things done. Both of these sound right, right? We picture a leader as someone out in front and self-assured, confident. The bronze statue of a general on a horse and all that. And what would that general be if he didn’t get things done?
But is it true? Do leaders always have to be supremely confident? And what does it really mean to “get things done?”
Let’s break it down.
Leadership Confidential
I have seen it, and you have seen it too: the leader who is so convinced they are on the right path that they dismiss warning signs and even the advice of their people. Their confidence is almost contagious and spreads throughout their organizational culture to the point where anyone who disagrees is ignored, pushed aside, or worse.
Just as with the leadership guru on the stage, it is difficult to resist a boss who projects such self-assurance, so we tend to associate that supreme confidence with supreme leadership. In reality, we are confusing leadership with control. To control is not to lead. A jailer controls an inmate, to be sure, but does not lead that inmate in any meaningful way. And an overly-confident jailer is usually not a successful jailer. Similarly, bosses who seek to control their people have ceded any claim to leadership.
Now I am not saying that a leader doesn’t need some confidence. Of course a leader needs self-esteem, even a bit of restrained narcissism, to function. What I am saying is that self-confidence is not the mark of a leader despite what gurus claim.
You can understand their mistake, though. Confidence seems integral to leadership. When a supremely confident person speaks, their conviction wipes the doubt from our minds. When everyone else is immobilized by uncertainty, the person who boldly says, “we need to march forward,” just feels correct, yes? You may experience relief that at least someone is being decisive. After all, how can someone without doubts be wrong? Now imagine that person invites you up for a refreshing cup of delicious Kool-Aid.
I am being flip, but you get my point. I hope.
Part of the trouble stems from us confusing bluster and swagger for confidence. Real confidence is not boastful. It stems from the knowledge that your people know and trust you and that you trust them. Truly confident leaders are humble and occasionally unsure. The very best know that skillfully displaying their vulnerability and sharing their humanity with their people will create a bond of mutual trust that will lead to success. So, yes, leaders are confident and inspire confidence by being part of a trusting team.
Getting Things Done
The other piece of sketchy leadership advice you hear all the time is that leaders get things done. Let’s put this in perspective.
My grandfather was a master tailor. He had a little workspace in his house where he would toil away making and repairing clothes. If you saw the impeccable suits he created, you would say he most decidedly got things done. Alone. In a room. He led no one because he had no one to lead. Now someone may say, “well, Jim, he led his family,” but that’s just silly.
What I am saying is that if getting things done is a distinctive mark of leadership, then simply accomplishing anything would make you a leader. In reality, though, the one who does it all is usually the opposite of a leader.
In fact, the gets-thing-done model of leadership is the antithesis of leadership. I have been involved in organizations where everyone is supposed to be working on a project, but the assigned leader and maybe a few lieutenants choose to take on pretty much everything while grousing how they have to do pretty much everything. The role of the leader may involve doing stuff, but the primary purpose of a leader is to get others to do it, ideally because they want to do it.
The leader achieves this trick through carefully setting goals, listening actively, communicating clearly and thoroughly, breaking large tasks into logical steps, establishing trust, protecting people, encouraging people, empowering people, praising people, critiquing people with a mixture of firmness and caring, and so on.
That is the role of the leader and those are some of the actions the leader performs in support of that role. Getting things done is what the team does. The leader primarily assures they do so.
Here is a handy rule of thumb. If you think, “I have to do all the work,” then you are not a leader. If leadership is not part of your position, fine. If you are a boss, though, that is on you. You either need to get better people, or (and there is a high likelihood here) they need to get a better boss.
I am not a leadership guru. I am just a guy who has done and continues to do a lot of studying and has experienced a lot of things and has made a lot of mistakes. I will tell you that the basics of leadership are pretty simple in concept and start with communication. The struggle is in effectively and consistently applying them. To be sure, confidence can be important to leadership. And getting things done is obviously a good thing. But neither one is defining when it comes to leadership, not even close.
What leadership advice have you received that seemed sketchy? Do you rely on confidence or getting things done to serve as a leader?
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Don’t Be Gulled by Gurus—An Encore Presentation