What is Leadership?
Why leadership has nothing to do with managing a team.
I was recently talking to a prospective client about his goals for coaching.
“I want to work on my Leadership.”
Beautiful. The perfect client. And yet...
Something was amiss.
My intuition latched onto how he said it. Leadership. What did he mean by it? What do any of us mean by it?
This was a promising leader at an early stage company. He was eager to become a manager and climb the ranks, ideally amassing more and more of the organization under him as he grew. I suspected that when he said “leadership”, what he actually meant were the tactical skills of management. He was unconsciously saying “I’m not here to work on me, I’m here to develop the skill of managing others.”
Intuition being more of a compass than a GPS, I asked him: “What do you mean when you say leadership?”
“You know, managing a team, growing the number of people underneath you.”
Ding ding ding. Intuition wins this round.
“That’s not exactly what leadership means to me,” I said. “For me, Leadership is about responsibility.”
What is Leadership?
The more I discuss leadership, the more I find that few of us know what we mean when we say it. “Leadership”. Do you know what you mean by it?
Many people make the mistake of waiting to think about leadership until they have a meaningful number of people underneath them. They equate leadership with having people to lead. While this definition is technically correct, it misses the heart and soul of what leadership is.
Some of the best leaders I’ve worked with had 0 direct reports. Some of the worst had teams of 12. I’m sure you’ve experienced similar. “Having people to lead” just doesn’t seem to capture the essence of leadership.
A better definition might be being the type of person that people want as a leader. This starts to get to the heart of matter, but still isn’t operational. It doesn’t inform you of how to get better.
But there’s a clue there. Being the type of person who is a leader. If we separate managing people from leadership, what we’re left with is a state of mind—a way of being in the world.
What way of being? It’s born of one simple concept: Responsibility.
A leader is someone who takes full responsibility for their impact and influence in the world.
Leadership as Responsibility
By full responsibility, I mean for far more than hitting targets.
I mean radical, 100% responsibility.
Sure, a good leader has a results orientation and is driving outcomes. But a true leader takes radical responsibility, which encompasses much more:
A true leader take responsibility for their emotional state.
A true leader takes responsibility for their emotional impact on others.
A true leader takes responsibility for the state of their relationships.
A true leader takes responsibility for their personal development.
A true leader takes responsibility for the continued development of those around them.
This definition of leadership is much more than managing people or driving outcomes. It’s taking responsibility for all of that and more.
Taking Responsibility vs. Placing Blame
Notice that every bullet point above begins with the same five words: A true leader takes responsibility…
This is a very different game than what most leaders play. Most leaders live in a world of blame. They place blame on self, other, or external forces.
When a leader decides to embody responsibility, they stop blaming. Rather than placing blame on others, themselves, or external forces, they take responsibility and encourage their team to do the same. Leaders who take responsibility ask questions like:
How am I creating this situation?
What is this situation here to teach me?
When I blame, what am I distracting myself from knowing or doing?
How can I take 100% responsibility for this situation?
What is one easy, measurable action I can take to take 100% responsibility?
This is a wildly different set of questions than what most of us are used to hearing. When leaders play the blame game, they ask questions like: “Why did this happen? Who messed up? Who’s going to fix it?”
When leaders take responsibility, it makes it easier for their team to. A team that takes collective responsibility is a magical team to be on. This team creates a positive feedback loop of learning, growth, and responsibility, rather than your typical negative feedback loop of defensiveness, competition, and blame.
This is the magic of great leadership: it starts with the individual and spreads to everyone they touch. I’m certain you’ve experienced it. Great leaders have a Midas touch: put them anywhere and things begin to improve. That’s because all improvement starts with the same seed, that of Radical Responsibility.
Viewed this way, leadership is not something you do nor is it something you arrive to at a certain number of employees. Leadership isn’t even something that’s confined to work. Leadership is a way of being, a way of moving through the world. It’s something to be embodied. This is why leadership is so difficult to teach: it must be lived and breathed at a fundamental level.
Becoming a Leader
Let’s revisit my prospective client from the beginning of the post. His interest in developing management skills comes from a good place. One way a good leader takes responsibility is by developing the skills necessary to be effective, including those of management. But were we to focus on those skills alone, there would have been a tractor trailer sized hole in his leadership: that of how he shows up. Is he taking responsibility or is he placing blame? Is he being a leader?
Focusing on the doing of management without the being of leadership results in the lifeless-blame-game-corporate-leadership that too many of us have experienced in our careers. It’s fine, but unnecessarily draining and sure as hell isn’t leadership.
I offered a reframe: “We can work on management skills. But first, I want us to take a hard look at how you show up.”
He was game. We were getting somewhere.
Challenge
If you aspire to leadership or are in a leadership role, stop aspiring to be a leader someday. Start being a leader now.
What’s one issue in your work or life that you haven’t taken responsibility for? Explore what it would be like to take 100% responsibility, without blaming yourself or others. Ask yourself:
How am I creating this situation?
What is this situation here to teach me?
When I blame, what am I distracting myself from knowing or doing?
How can I take 100% responsibility for it?
What is one easy, measurable action I can take to take 100% responsibility? By when?
Then go take it.
Rinse & repeat for all issues in your work and life.
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I appreciate how you’ve framed this. Leader development that focuses more on the leader’s impact and character rather than their interactions with followers. It’s reflective, and what I have noticed as of late is that people focus more on the, as you say, management aspect and not what any given person can do to develop their character and “how they show up”. Thanks!