I was under a bit of pressure…
Normally I don’t recommend binge reading or trying to read books quickly, but I was feeling a bit of pressure. I was chosen to be a co-director for a Leadership program through my local Chamber of Commerce and I felt like I still had a lot to learn about Leadership. With only a few months to prepare, I wanted to do something to get myself ‘ready’. I started searching online for the best books on Leadership, there are tons of lists about that.
Instead of just buying books online, I decided to go to used book stores and just see what they had. I ended up stumbling upon and reading about 2 dozen books on Leadership. Yes, actual books from actual bookstores! (This was pre-Covid) Some books I had heard of, some I had never heard of and I just dived into this pile of books. Some of the books were terrible, but there were some gems in there.
Choosing books on Leadership
Leadership books tend to fall into a few categories, business leadership, military leadership, sports leadership, political/social leadership, self leadership, etc. Business leadership seems to be the biggest category, but many books on leadership have common themes across these categories. Many people say that leadership is about influence. A big part of influence is the ability to build relationships of rapport and one of the best ways to grow as a leader is to help others grow. So books about personal development, building relationships, coaching, and increasing your influence can also be helpful in learning about leadership.
The books that I found the most valuable tended to be the ones that were based on research by people who study leadership. Often good leaders, or even bad leaders aren’t fully aware of what they are doing that makes them great or not so great leaders. It takes academics, consultants, researchers, historians, etc. to find and test the principles that make leaders successful. So, when you are looking for books to read, you might consider looking into how the book was written and the background of the authors, rather than just picking the latest best seller or famous author.
Don’t Try to Learn Everything about Leadership
At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, try not to make your study of leadership too academic. Rather than trying to learn everything there is to know about leadership, I think it’s better to pick a few concepts to master and make it a habit to implement them. When you consistently apply knowledge through action, you begin to embody the knowledge and your results speak more loudly than your words. It’s easy to say, ‘I know that already’. It’s much more difficult and more impactful to demonstrate knowing a concept through the results you achieved by consistently applying it.
The hardest and most unforgiving aspect of leadership is that people don’t always listen to what you say, but they watch everything you do. You might love to talk and you might even be good at it, but if your words and actions are not aligned, you will struggle as a leader. People won’t take you seriously and they will tell each other all about it, but probably never mention it to you. The first habit I try to work on is to lead by example. You could actually just stop reading here and spend the rest of your life working on this habit. It’s the most basic and most difficult rule of leadership. If you can master it, you will be a great leader.
You may have to unlearn what you have learned
It’s also important to realize that you might need to unlearn a few things about leadership. When I was younger, I had some biases against leaders and leadership that kept me from wanting to be a leader and held me back from personal growth. ‘Leader’ was a bit of a dirty word to me. I would cringe when I heard people say that in order to be successful, you have to learn to be a good team player.
In school we were taught to do our own work. It seemed counterintuitive to me that a leader needs to be a good team player. “The leader was the boss and you have to what they say. When you are the boss people will do what you say, right?” I didn’t understand the fundamental nature of leadership yet. Influence was something that fan of. I didn’t like feeling pressured by others, so I never tried to influence anyone else, just live and let live.
Slowly I began to realize that people want to be influenced. If you listen carefully, people are constantly asking to be influenced. We often make general and vague comments that we don’t fully believe but can’t refute, almost begging others to tell us we are wrong, but defending our limiting beliefs against anyone who challenges them. It’s important for us to have beliefs to hold onto even if they are wrong. We can’t give up these beliefs until we have new beliefs to replace them and most of us don’t want to be told what to believe, we want to discover it for ourselves. As a leader, you have to guide people to the answers without simply telling them.
Why does Leadership matter?
I think it should be clear now, more than ever, just how important leadership is. Humans have the ability to do incredible things that can only be achieved through the coordination of individual efforts. It takes Leadership to make this happen. Some writers refer to this as Leadership with a capital ‘L’, referring to positions of power and influence. The tricky thing here is that these positions generally come with a certain amount of prestige and tend to attract people whose need to feel significant sometimes outweighs their desire to serve and those who really want to serve don’t always feel worthy of these high positions. Also, many individuals and organizations are highly motivated to influence these Leaders for their own benefit.
Leadership vs. leadership
On one side, we have the consciously created collaborations of human effort requiring good Leadership. On the other side is what we are constantly creating unintentionally, the net effect of our individual actions that can have a profound impact at all levels from our small circle out to the entire planet. Yet, we typically don’t assume responsibility for the net effects of our individual actions. ‘It’s just one plastic bottle, one vote, one harmless comment, how much difference can one person make?’ said 7 billion individuals. We coordinate our efforts and ideas through laws, infrastructure, organizations, business, education, media, belief systems but most fundamentally through culture.
We take part in shaping our culture every time we speak, act or react. Everything created begins with words that begin with thoughts that are affected by both action and inaction. Every time we cut someone off in traffic versus slowing down to let someone in, every time we laugh at an inappropriate joke versus taking the person aside and helping them to understand the impact of what they said, we are creating and defining our culture and values which shapes our behavior and the behavior of others. This is the type of leadership that we need more of. Leadership with a lowercase ‘l’. The type of leadership you don’t need a title for, leadership by example with an understanding of our individual global impact.
You are part of the problem and part of the solution
There is a quote that I believe is true. ‘If you can’t see yourself as part of the problem, you won’t be able to see yourself as part of the solution.’ And if you can’t see yourself as part of the solution, how can you be a leader? I believe that all the problems we face today are problems that we have had some role in creating or at minimum allowing to persist. If you want to be a leader, you have to recognize and take responsibility for your role in creating the problem. I think that as a leader, you give up your right to complain. It’s your job to hear the complaints from all sides and orchestrate the solution.
At the most basic level, l would say that leaders are people who care enough about a cause or a situation to want to make it better and are willing to take action. If you don’t care, you won’t become a leader. In order to be a leader, you have to want to make things better. If you aren’t willing to take action, you won’t be a leader. The most effective leaders are the ones who truly care about the people they serve and are committed to helping them grow.
If the people you lead aren’t growing, they won’t be happy, the results will be mediocre and they will eventually leave. In order for the people you lead to be committed to the result you are pursuing, they have to believe that you care about them. If you aren’t committed to the result, they won’t follow you and if nobody follows, they you aren’t leading.
My top picks from the pile of Leadership books:
Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink.
It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy by Captain D. Michael Abrashoff.
Mindset by Carol S. Dweck
Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t by Jim Collins
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Collins and Porras
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan and John King.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr Viktor Frankl.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Start with Why by Simon Sinek:
