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A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. – Lao Tzu
What do you think of when you’re asked to imagine a leader?
The chances are that it’s some sort of caricature of what leadership really is like.
There are some leaders who truly believe that mission and vision statements work, that putting a wishful idea on paper somehow makes it come true.
That’s not the case. A bad business will stay bad no matter how many vision statements you write.
A bad business can also survive for a surprisingly long time.
An evolutionary model probably makes more sense. There’s an ecosystem of businesses and some are new, some are old, some are good, some are bad, and some are alive and some die.
It’s a neverending game.
Leader number one, then, is the one on a pedestal, the one that point to where we need to go and takes everyone with them.
I suspect such leaders are discovered if they succeeded. How many great leaders can you name that lost?
Napoleon comes to mind. Is Custer one?
The second kind of leader turns things around – they call themselves servants of their people.
Their job is to support and push their team forward.
I’m a little sceptical about that one as well, especially if they claim to be servants while earning 3,000 times as much as their employees.
The model that I think is relevant for this day and age is a leader who is a colleague.
Probably one that has more experience than you or has taken the risky step to start the business – that’s why they’re in charge.
But they’re there because they know what they’re doing.
And if you’re the person in charge it’s never been easier to work alongside your team members, regardless of where they are in the world.
You can go and see the work being done simply by joining a call and sharing screens.
That kind of leader understands what’s happening at the point where customers interact with the business and tries to shorten the time between first contact and the receipt of money for a completed service.
They do that by understanding the business as a system and working to improve it.
Simple really.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
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