Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and later “Zuck” are legendary founders and leaders. And it’s true, the founder can be an intangible value if they are good at it, which these folks were. Their cult of success soon led to numerous consultants and authors trying (successfully) to convince us that the next Gates and Jobs is within everyone and launched the efforts to analyze, diagnose, and implant their genius into every level of leadership from the start-up to the established.
The opportunity led to an exponential growth of books, workshops and consulting in this space. The social leader, the empathetic leader, the listening leader, the caring leader… the fragmentation is never-ending, recycled and self-propelling but I’m not buying it and neither should you, be you a CEO, president, founder or an employee under the direction of one of these folks. I’m here to say a good leader can have all those qualities (should have all those qualities) but if that’s ALL they focus on, themselves, their personal development, then everyone will ultimately lose.
You see, I still believe in the tired use of sports and military analogies in leadership because what ultimately matters in each is the team under these folks operating effectively, efficiently, and creatively within their context – that’s how they win. Leaders in baseball focus on baseball, the captain has a ship, and go figure… the business leader has a company to run. So yes, social, empathy, caring, and listening qualities are critical to success in each of these contexts but a real leader is focused on making these qualities the qualities of the business not of his/herself.
Go ahead read the books, get the coach and model these behaviors and maybe, just maybe those directly underneath will model them too. But in my opinion, you’re better off spending your valuable time assessing your organizational design to see why or why not the people creating the products and services are empathetic, listening, caring, or social. I’d bet it’s not because the leader is or isn’t. Rather, I’d argue, it’s how the systems – the rules that govern behaviors are designed… the systems the leader has the ability to change if need be.
No doubt a leader should always try to be a better human, but if they want a better company, they need to spend less time changing themselves in the hope it trickles down to others and spend more time changing the conditions in the organization so change happens quickly.
