Everyone has traits of leaders
What is leadership? What makes someone follow or influence another? The answer is everything and nothing. A leader is someone one is willing to follow and respect, and one respects different things, depending on the particular situation.
Conventional leadership is all about people that make great impacts, that are controversial, often loved or hated. The usual leaders that society brings up are extraordinary man, one way or the other, and this often distances common people from them. But look at some real people around you! Very simple people, not supernatural ones, that have a significant impact in others lives: aren’t those true leaders, just like JFK or MLK? A professor of mathematics when you were 10 years old, an friend that teaches you how to play a strategy game and hooks you up to strategy for life. How important are those leaders for society? Don’t those people have the inner self characteristics of leadership: ethical values, strong passion for a subject, inner strength put in a subject and don´t those qualities influence others around them?
Society or a business organization or a group of friends that can bring up the best of the inner self of people is surely better prepared for the world in constant change than monolithic organizations organized around one “true” leader: the “Messiah”. Remember the butterfly effect! It is just a case of collecting that individual inner strength in people: easier said than done!!!
This introduces the second point: this traits manifest in different ways.
The traits manifest in different ways
People are very different and the influence manifests in different ways and in different situations. One can be a leader in a facet, but not so much of a leader for other stuff. Leaders are role models to follow and not to mimic. For example: someone you might admire in politics, but you wouldn’t ask to dinner at your house. A medical doctor that you respect, but never want to meet! A friend that you strongly enjoy, but you never like to work with! What are the qualities in a leader that inspire others: ones may have more task oriented qualities (especially in work environment), others are more able to interconnect with the world and others have the inner strength to pursue long term objectives.
The key issue when searching for the qualities we want to grow inside to become a leader is diversity and tolerance. Diversity is probably the most important aspect of Humanity: Humanity is what it is because of diversity; the ability to think and to act based on its most interior thoughts and believes. In a globalized world this diversity is more and more visible and important, pushing and expanding the limits of society further and further.
The feedback loop on this continued expansion should be tolerance and not bigotry. Tolerance should be the glue that sticks society in a constantly new interconnected world. Why? Because traits of leadership can manifest in very different ways. In a society that often is resilient to change, tolerance is probably the way that allows people to grow at their own pace, even the ones that are most resilient to change. To what point can tolerance be tolerant to intolerance? I believe that tolerance can be tolerant to intolerance in order to get the best out of people in the long term. The biggest enemy to a society is to believe that one point of view can mold and shape everybody at very fast pace: schools are often organized by models that funnel creativity; in business organizations this pattern is even more visible. The biggest flops in major corporations are the inability to pursue new, often different paths of knowledge, taking refuge on internal dogmas. No diversity is allowed, because tolerance is at the minimum.
The true leader, in an organization, is one that has both the ability to make everyone to row in the same direction, but, at the same time, allows for people to change to a better river to row. Society should be organized in a way that allow and nurture diversity and to take the best out of people. Again: small impact multiplied by many creates a big impact.
And how can society take advantage of diversity with tolerance: it is a continuous process of alignment!
It is a continuous process of alignment
Diversity isn’t the alienation of people. It is the opposite: diversity is a continuous process of alignment. Why? Because the world is getting more and more interconnected and a leader must be able to interconnect to the world. Being intellectually well prepared and having the inner strength are necessary conditions but not sufficient: one needs to interconnect with the world.
Leaders are people that are able to interconnect the dots of diversity and create value for society. Not value in the traditional sense: money, but the true sense of value, something that one can respect and admire: social responsibility for all the stakeholders involved in a lifecycle sustainable perspective.
So in this case, true leaders are great servants.
Effective leaders are great servants
True leaders are great servants because leadership is often not about the leader, but the quality of its followers. A friend of mine states that 1st quality leaders “have” 1st quality followers and that 2nd quality leaders “choose” 2nd or 3rd quality followers. And to have great followers, great leaders must understand and respect the importance of people. The biggest achievement of a great leader is to create an environment where everybody can risk overtaking the leader.
But effective leaders must be great servants to the team or followers and also to society in general. The guy that invented lead as a stabilizer for gasoline could be a servant to his team and his organization, but he was a very bad servant to society. So one must find causes where we can understand the greatness of serving society, understanding that it isn’t always black and white decisions, but never to blame others and taking refuge in grey areas.
This takes us to last point: great leaders see greatness in other.
Great leaders see greatness in others
Great leaders see greatness in others is the expected conclusion of this essay. If everyone has traits of leaders, and the traits manifest in different ways in a continuous process of alignment, then a great leader becomes a servant and one of his roles is too continuously reinforce this loop of greatness throughout his circle of influence. The greater power of great leader is to understand the greatness in others: Muhammad Yunus saw this with is microcredit and Ohno realized this when implementing Lean techniques. The biggest power in society is people and people only. Leadership is about enhancing people.
