One of the biggest leadership myths is that “leaders get things done,” a notion I find catastrophically specious, as I discussed in my piece on steering clear of gurus.
This misconception has led many to believe that tangible outcomes are the best or even the only hallmark of exceptional leadership.
Let’s consider your own experiences. I will go out on a limb and bet that you’ve been part of more than a few teams that achieved their goals. Whether it was in sports, a community project, a volunteer opportunity, or a work collaboration, there was someone in charge, right? Maybe several someones. And while their leadership may have received credit for the team’s success, is that always an accurate assessment?
Now think back to a time when a team you were on succeeded despite the leadership. I’ve encountered this scenario many times, and this is how it usually goes down. The project starts okay as the team gathers and each member is assigned tasks. As the process unfolds, because of the dearth of effective leadership, everything quickly falls into disarray with no clear lines of communication or accountability. As a result, some team members barely contribute, some others do the minimum, and the rest go above and beyond by picking up the slack for their peers. I call this phenomenon the Rule of Thirds or Ro3.
As time goes on, team members drift away, frustrated or disengaged. New faces might join, but the team’s morale continues to sink. Regardless, amidst the turmoil, the project somehow comes off, and the lousy leaders accept their unearned accolades without compunction. Yet the truth remains that the success is due almost entirely to the dedicated few who carried the load and not the leaders and the slackers.
I can almost hear someone out there objecting, “who cares who gets credit just so long as the job got done?” I am going to gloss over such ends-justifying-the-means thinking, to raise some questions of my own. Would you willingly participate in this leaderless scenario, and, if so, would you be a worker or a sitter? And how sustainable was the process? What if the same group tackled another project? Or a third? What if they had to expand the project or the team for their next endeavor? The fact is that for success to be sustainable and scalable it must occur in a culture of collaboration with each member contributing to the team's triumph. While collaboration can exist in a limited way without leaders, leaders foster robust, lasting, and scalable collaboration, which is one of the most important elements of leadership, what I call the 4 Cs: character, communication, compromise, and collaboration.
Here’s a fundamental truth: squandered leadership damages teams, which limits outcomes and soon leads to high turnover, uneven workload distribution, and wasted resources. Plus teams with poor leadership are neither scalable nor sustainable. If you have a good team, why squander its potential with bad leadership?
Teams work best when everyone works together because everyone is focused on the goal, which requires effective leadership. Unless your team exists for a one-off effort, sacrificing long-term cohesion for short-term gain is imprudent at best, enabling disengaged team members and inept leaders.
The Lindy Effect and the Persistence of Existence
What is true of small team projects can be equally true of large organizations, such as corporations. In fact, there is another common and related myth pertaining to long-lived institutions: that their longevity is largely the product of good leadership.
Weirdly, though, even under atrocious leadership, some large institutions endure, propped up by a phenomenon known as the “Lindy effect.” The Lindy effect theory was refined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who observed that for “nonperishable” entities—those that do not have a predictable termination date, such as institutions—the length of their existence “may imply a longer life expectancy.” In other words, long-standing entities increase their longevity the longer they exist.
Have you ever noticed that for certain institutions, after a point, their staying power seems to have little to do with their output, efficacy, or management? They just continue to exist because they continue to exist. This is why there are so many lumbering dinosaurs in corporate, non-profit, and higher education spaces that have lasted long past their time, lingering indefinitely for no apparent reason.
Think about that venerable but antique restaurant in your town. How can it remain afloat while its more modern and appealing competition comes and inevitably goes? It’s the Lindy effect! The old establishment perseveres even amidst market volatility simply because it has been viable for so long. In other words, the longer it survives, the longer it will survive. That’s Lindy!
Here’s how it works: if an entity has existed 30 years, you can expect it to continue on another 30, but in 10 years you can expect it to be around another 40, and so on. Of course the Lindy effect is not always so precise or absolute, but there is a wisdom to it. If something has been around a long time, it’s probably got some merit. It has, after all, stood the test of time. That’s why for almost 200 years people could walk into Macy’s (founded 1843) to purchase a Ticonderoga pencil (founded 1795) and some Crane Stationary (founded 1799) to finally get started on that book for HarperCollins Publishers (founded 1817).
Notice how none of this—the successful projects or enduring institutions—has anything to do with leadership. A poorly led team can still succeed for a time, just as some antediluvian but mismanaged corporation can endure. These outcomes stem from different factors that are utterly unrelated to the caliber of leadership.
In other words, far from “leaders get things done,” things can get done with or without decent leadership and often do.
So what’s leadership’s role then? Good leadership enhances quality and sustainability. It fosters teamwork, elevates outcomes, and ensures that the team or institution is ready for what the future will bring. The effects of great leadership are both sustainable and scalable.
Meanwhile, Lindy-fied institutions may chug along, but they lack the allure and advantages of innovative ventures. The Lindy effect offers a type of stability, but it is not likely to inspire the blazing of new trails. That job at IBM will dependably pay the bills, but most young innovators will find their calling and invest their passions elsewhere.
If your goal is just to get something done or exist for the sake of existing, good leadership is irrelevant. On the other hand, to aim for excellence, innovation, consistent success, and expansion—to name a few advantages—you need great leadership.
If you just want something done, do it yourself. If you want it done well or done again or bigger, you need a good leader.
What is the value of leadership to one-off projects? What institutions do you know that endure despite their mediocrity?
The role of a leader is to enhance and improve, not just get things done and persist, and I can help.
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Jim Salvucci, Ph.D., is an author, keynote speaker, coach, and consultant. He served higher education for 30 years as an English professor, dean, and vice president before founding Guidance for Greatness to guide young bosses to become the next generation of great leaders. He is a certified Tiny Habits coach as well as a certified Thrive Global coach and life coach and holds leadership certificates from Harvard University and the Council of Independent Colleges. Central to Jim’s leadership philosophy is that all great leaders are great humans as well as great teachers, guiding their people and their organizations through values toward success.
Leadership Myths: The Truth about Getting Things Done and Persistence