A view of leadership is that we must sustain a certain image of confidence and competence. To me that is more of a hygiene factor than a defining factor. A sloppy, ineffectual person is not a leader to himself, so how can he lead others, but the maintenance of a certain image is not the preserve of leaders – if it were so, then Churchill, a depressed chain-smoker and drinker, would never have been a great leader.
It is a misnomer that a leader’s presence energizes organisations. That misnomer is rooted in clergy-laity thinking, which has come to mean that contemporary churches cannot do church without the presence of their leader. To my mind, that invalidates the leader. The real proof of leadership is when others can continue without the leader. God had a dependent following in the wilderness, but never settled there – rather He led them into a codependent state, where they occupied the Promised Land under God.
So then, how do we energize organisations?
Nothing or almost nothing deflates an organisation or individuals more than a loss of direction and purpose, which is lost to poor communication, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, wrong signals and rewards for wrong behavior.
A man fired a worker for bad workmanship, but then saw him at a ten-pin bowling alley. He was so good at the game that the boss had to inquire why the worker could do this so well, not that. In reply, he simply said, “Here I knew what to aim for”.
People often either don’t know what they need to do or retreat back to what they know and then end up being irrelevant. I have seen many workers doing stuff that is no longer important, because that is what they know. They fear change and prefer to stay with what they know. I have seen people resort to criticism and negative behavior, because they find solace in others who are equally disillusioned about how they add value. I have also seen businesses waste money on bonuses where regular acknowledgement would do far better.
Bosses try to lift motivation through motivational speeches, team building efforts, incentives, manipulation and by modeling positive behavior, but that only addresses symptoms not causes. People need direction and, where change is happening, they need to be led into that direction until they have enough confidence to get on with it. Once they have direction they need the space to express that without being mothered, but as they start to gain momentum they then need relevant restraints to hold them on course.
The ideal state is one where people know what to do, feel empowered to act, are acknowledged for doing so and know where their boundaries are. That shifts the leader from a close, supervisory role, to a broad, gatekeeper role, where people can do what the leader is not good at doing, so the leader can harness organizational energy to achieve bigger objectives. It's one of reason why my son's best rugby season was under a tough, uncompromising leader - they knew where they stood, but bound together as a team (to draw solace from each other) and then went on to win all their games, losing in the league final by 3 points.
To be absolutely honest, true leadership is less about the leader than the led, and true leaders would do better to decrease, so that the whole may increase.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net
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