Skip to main content

What Is a Leader?

Is a leader a visionary with amazing insights into the future and groundbreaking new ideas? Is a leader full of charisma able to rally positive energy and action from those they influence? Is a leader a doer who puts in countless hours to ensure that all parts of the process they lead are completed? Is a leader someone with a strong personality who demands loyalty? Is a leader someone who empowers those in their charge to carry the burden of success?

The answer to those questions is yes, no, maybe, or sometimes. Each leader is different and probably contains some parts of all of those. Leaders who know themselves will recognize their areas of weakness and surround themselves with complementary leaders. A leader without a vision is more of a manager, and that is not a negative term. Most of what happens daily is the management of the essential tasks. However, a leader who is only a visionary needs to pair up with a manager, or the vision will never become a reality. 

Many leaders are charismatic, attracting people with their energy and passion. However, charisma cannot compensate for when a vision falls short or significant unforeseen challenges arise. Eventually, people will tire of the constant positive energy and want to just get to work. Therefore, charismatic leaders need to invest their time in optimizing their systems. 

A workaholic leader, nose to the grindstone, will get a lot done. However, if their staff cannot keep up, they will burn out, and the leader will have constant turnover. Then, the leader's energy must be spent on hiring and training, not completing the work. Their employees will also be less inclined to put effort into the job, as they know the leader will do it anyway. This creates an unhealthy dependence on the leader, which is frustrating and the leader's fault. 

Loyalty to the cause is vital for an employee. If they work for an organization and have their pay and benefits provided, they must be dedicated to the mission. But a leader who demands blind loyalty will not be getting the best their people have to offer. They will be told they are correct, and what they ask for will get done. But blind loyalty leads to stagnation at the least and corruption at the most. A leader needs to hear differing viewpoints and be told when they are flat-out wrong. That takes vulnerability from the leader and trust from whom they are leading. Loyalty emerges as the unified front once all the hard conversations behind the scenes have happened and the plan is set into action.

An empowering leader will get the most out of their people. It probably means the leader will need to step back and let others do the work. A leader is either a founder who did every role at one point as they were getting started or someone who worked their way up many rungs of an organization. Relinquishing control of each part of the process and trusting that others can do the work as well as the leader once did is hard. However, hiring the right people who can focus on each part of their total job, rather than one person doing it all, is rocket fuel for any organization. Empowered people may indeed leave once they have acquired skills and experience, but that is a cause for celebration.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vulnerability

I cannot claim to be an expert on vulnerability, that title belongs to Brene Brown. Through her work, I have learned that being vulnerable is key to major breakthroughs in life. The opposite of this is true as well. Being unwilling to take risks, fearing failure or embarrassment, leads to stilted growth and eventual regression. The unwillingness to struggle in the short term leads to eventual major disappointment. That struggle is unpleasant, painful, draining, aggravating, defeating, and necessary. As a teacher, vulnerability arises when teaching a new grade level or content area. It happens when a re-designed lesson is taught for the first time, a new resource is used, and when being observed. Leaders face vulnerability when launching a new initiative and taking questions from stakeholders. Coaches face vulnerability when they meet with a new client or a client who operates outside the coach's wheelhouse of knowledge or skills. Humans are adept at procrastinating, which is a phys...
Post a Comment
Read more

Navigating Uncertainty

One thing most people can agree on in early April 2024 is that no one knows what to expect right now. Federal agencies are being closed at a record pace, tariffs are rocking global finances, AI is changing faster than most people can keep up with, everyone has an opinion on this, and no one can anticipate what might happen next. The stock market is a prime example of the uncertainty, and on the day I started writing this the Dow Jones surged by 800 points and ultimately fell by 600. Today as I continue writing, it rose by nearly 3000 points. There are countless ways to reach when life becomes chaotic. Some people "don't look up" as the movie's title states, because as long as you can't see the asteroid heading straight towards you it does not exist. Some like to lean into the chaos, acting like Loki, the Norse god of mischief and disruption. Others protest through marches, speeches, and boycotts. All of these are human reactions on which I place no judgment. Based...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scheduling - A School's Heuristic Problem

Students learn about algorithms in Computer Science to solve complex problems in reasonable times. Some issues are too complex even for the best algorithms to perfectly solve, and those are known as heuristics. The example commonly used is the traveling salesman. While a little outdated, and I have updated the example to be the logistics of UPS delivering packages, the story goes like this.  A traveling salesman arrives in a new town intending to get to each house in the most efficient path possible. They get a road map of all the homes they will visit and their hotel room and start mapping out paths. The math works out to show the following: Let's nerd out for a moment. Each number of possible paths is the mathematical factorial of the number of homes on the path. So 3 homes means 3*2*1 = 6 paths. 7 homes means 7*6*5*4*3*2*1 = 5040 homes. Just 10 homes, and we are at 10 factorial or 3,682,800 pathways! How can one possibly solve for the best route with that many choices? It is too...
Post a Comment
Read more