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Unique Leadership
Excepted from "The
Leader of the Future," by Peter Drucker
Some unambiguous lessons about leadership
- The first is that there may be "born
leaders," but there surely are far too few to depend on
them. Leadership must be learned and can be learned.
- The second major lesson is that "leadership
personality," "leadership style," and "leadership
traits" do not exist. ... The one and only personality trait
the effective ones I have encountered did have in common was
something they did not have: they had little or no "charisma"
and little use either for the term or for what it signifies.
What leaders know
All the effective leaders I have encountered-both
those I worked with and those I merely watched-knew four simple
things:
- The only definition of a leader is someone
who has followers. Some people are thinkers. Some are prophets.
Both roles are important and badly needed. But without followers,
there can be no leaders.
- An effective leader is not someone who
is loved or admired. He or she is someone whose followers do
the right things. Popularity is not leadership. Results are.
- Leaders are highly visible. They therefore
set examples.
- Leadership is not rank, privileges, titles,
or money. It is responsibility.
What leaders do
Regardless of their almost limitless diversity
with respect to personality, style, abilities, and interests,
the effective leaders I have met, worked with, and observed also
behaved much the same way:
- They did not start out with the question,
"What do I want?" They started out asking, "What
needs to be done?"
- Then they asked, "What can and should
I do to make a difference?" This has to be something that
both needs to be done and fits the leader's strengths and the
way she or he is most effective.
- They constantly asked, "What are
the organization's mission and goals? What constitutes performance
and results in this organization?"
- They were extremely tolerant of diversity
in people and did not look for carbon copies of themselves. It
rarely even occurred to them to ask, "Do I like or dislike
this person?" But they were totally-fiendishly-intolerant
when it came to a person's performance, standards, and values.
- They were not afraid of strength in their
associates. They gloried in it. Whether they had heard of it
or not, their motto was what Andrew Carnegie wanted to have put
on his tombstone: "Here lies a man who attracted better
people into his service than he was himself."
- One way or another, they submitted themselves
to the "mirror test"-that is, they made sure that the
person they saw in the mirror in the morning was the kind of
person they wanted to be, respect, and believe in. This way they
fortified themselves against the leader's greatest temptations-to
do things that are popular rather than right and to do petty,
mean, sleazy things.
- Finally, these effective leaders were
not preachers; they were doers. Effective leaders delegate a
good many things; they have to or they drown in trivia. But they
do not delegate the one thing that only they can do with excellence,
the one thing that will make a difference, the one thing that
will set standards, the one thing they want to be remembered
for. They do it.
Copyright
2001, Robert I. Winer, M.D.
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