Leaders take their teams, their followers, into unknown territory or into familiar territory but with unfamiliar or innovative products or services.
There are many types of leaders, ranging from those who stride out ahead and expect their team to follow to those who encourage and cajole their teams to higher performance levels that takes them to new places.
Leaders are not the same as managers, though a leader may need to function as a manager and a manager may also be a leader. So it is less about the person and more about what it is they are doing.
When we act as managers, we are usually working within a set of guidelines and aiming for known and definable goals, often within budgets and timetable constraints. When we are operating as leaders, there are no predetermined goals, other than those of improving and developing the business in as effective a way as possible.
Leaders operate with a wide field of vision whilst managers are narrowly focused
Leaders operate with a wide field of vision whilst managers are narrowly focused. Having said that, it's easy to get hung up on these definitions and miss the point that all of us are leaders (or could be) in some aspect of our working and private lives. Leaders become entrepreneurs when they back that vision and create something that didn’t exist before.
We need entrepreneurs. Without them we would still be living in primitive communities and considering that the next village is a long way away - and the people there are very strange.
Whether or not you believe that the leaders and entrepreneurs of the past have delivered us a world that we can approve of, we need entrepreneurs to take us forward to our dream of a future world. You may not achieve all of your dreams, but if you show no leadership at all, you can be sure that you will achieve none of them.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said, if you want to see change, be the change you want to see in the world. Or to borrow a slogan from more recent times: 'just do it!'
Leading with humanity
We appear to be teaching our potential leaders a model of leadership that is mechanistic, has defined 'right' and 'wrong' ways of doing things, is focused on money, and treats human beings as resources to be hired and fired on a whim.
This is best shown in the BBC TV show The Apprentice, where each week candidates for a high powered and well-paid job compete for the approval of surly electronics magnate Sir Alan Sugar. Based on the US Apprentice show featuring Donald Trump, each week the candidates are encouraged to employ strategies that further their own cause rather than those that best work for the team good. One person from the losing team is fired each week.
I don't, for one moment, believe that Sir Alan's approach on TV is the same as that which he employs in his day-to-day business life. It is clearly exaggerated to create tension and thus entertainment.
Sir Alan has been in business for many years and has built successful companies with loyal employees within them. The ruthless 'no excuses, fire 'em’ approach he takes on the show wouldn't have helped him to do that.
In a recent series of The Apprentice, for example, the winner had openly lied on his CV, but Sir Alan apparently felt it was not important to tell the truth – not a good example of integrity.
The problem is that a significant proportion of viewers believe that what they are watching is how business is actually conducted. So we get copycat ‘apprentices’ arriving in business and thinking that they should play the same games with the same amoral attitude. Perhaps worse, we may miss out on the skills and talent of those who decide that business is simply not for them.
Most leadership is about people. Leaders need followers, people who believe in their vision and direction.
History is littered with examples of leaders who abused the trust of their followers and led them into places they would never have gone alone. Leading with humanity is about developing a relationship of trust with your followers and not abusing the position of power that they give you.
I believe that you need to love your team, even those who go out of their way to be unlovable.
