Many people strive to become leaders, or fantasize about how they would behave when they are in that position, but leadership rarely matches the idealized fantasies. Should the best leaders sometimes appear lazy? Should they be unpopular? And is leadership really just about keeping your hands clean? The answers may well be ‘yes’ to all three, but perhaps not in the way you would expect.
Jan Rutherford is a leadership consultant, Founder of Self-Reliant Leadership, LLC, and Co-Host of The Leadership Podcast. After a career in the military, he took the experience he had gained to become an executive coach, as well as a tutor on MBA courses in the US and Ireland. He also runs ‘crucible expeditions’, when he takes executives on physically demanding and challenging expeditions, away from creature comforts, to learn about themselves, as well as learning how their teams coped when they were away.
Being busy is bad
The idea of being seen as hard-working frequently bears little relation to actual productivity or output, but remains a dominant factor when it comes to judging people’s work and attitudes. “When I entered the work world, it was very important you got there before the boss, you left after the boss, and for your boss to see you at your desk working,” Rutherford recalls.
While it’s superficially easy to measure when someone is at their desk and assume that means work, study after study has shown that office workers spend significant amounts of time at their desk doing anything other than work: without intrusive surveillance it’s very difficult to tell the difference between someone hard at work writing a report and someone writing a personal email. Looking busy is a problem because no-one is actually paid to look busy, Rutherford says, “they pay you because they believe there's going to be a return on the investment. Value doesn't mean time, value means output. Part of that is making sure that expectations are aligned with the powers that be. We're paid to produce results.”
Stop doing your old job, and start being a leader
As many people move up structures and take on more leadership responsibility, they continue performing the roles they had before. Leadership, however, is not about doing what the people you lead do, but leading them to do it.
Rutherford tells the story of an Army engineer who became a lieutenant and had to oversee his men building a bridge. He immediately got to work with his men, getting muddy and sweaty, doing the heavy lifting and, he thought, leading by example. Until his superior officer arrived and took him uphill to stand in the shade of a tree to watch his men toil. It was only when he was on the hill, in the cool shade, that he realized they were building the bridge in the wrong location.
“Did the men appreciate a leader who got dirty with them? Or would they have preferred a leader who saved them three hours of work?” Rutherford asks. The lieutenant wanted to be liked by his men, rather than seen as lazy. But the right thing to do may have had short-term pain for him, “a leader does what's best for the team, not what's best for his or her pride or ego. And that's hard, but it’s what you sign up for, and respect and popularity come over time when your team knows they can trust you to make the right decision for them.”
Do what only you can do
“The higher up you go, the less you are paid to do,” says Rutherford. Instead of filling your diary with meetings, make your time available to do the things that only you can do as a leader.
Rutherford highlights an exchange during a Charlie Rose interview of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in which Gates reveals that one of the best lessons he got from Buffett was his blank calendar. In the interview Buffett shares his calendar, a small pocketbook, and the interviewer reveals that there are only three or four appointments each month. Buffett’s rationale is simple, he always makes sure he has time to think and act, rather than sit in meetings: he can afford to buy almost anything, but not time.
Rutherford says it’s about the way leadership works, “the higher up you go, the less you actually ‘do’, it becomes more about clearing obstacles, providing resources, and making sure the direction and the pace is right.”
It’s all about being an effective leader, not a popular leader
In short, Rutherford’s lessons for leadership are about making the time, and sometimes the distance, to lead effectively. This might mean that staff form negative impressions in the short term, but the rewards over the longer term, for both the leader and their teams, far outweigh that short-term pain.
When you look at history, it’s clear to see that pattern. The leaders we tend to remember positively are those that were also thinkers, rather than getting into the thick of the action they took advantage of their strategic viewpoint and acted accordingly, even when their actions were initially unpopular, because they knew what was right.
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July 01, 2021 at 05:51AM
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Effective Leadership Vs. Popular Leadership: Throw Your Previous Knowledge Out The Window - Forbes
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