What Defines A Leader

Takeaways

At a time when leadership has become everything and nothing at the same time, it has never been more essential to define leadership for ourselves. Here is one way to do that.

In a past life, I taught a course on leadership at a University. The course began with students crafting their own definitions of leadership. My favorite was "Leadership is the art of convincing a group of people to follow you blindly, even if it means jumping off a cliff, as long as you do it with enough charisma and a really great dance move." OK. So not all of my students were producing "A" level work.

There are almost as many definitions for leadership as there are leaders. Maybe more. If you put 20 leaders in a room, you'll hear 30 definitions of leadership. It seems that so many attributes and characteristics have become part of leadership mythology that leadership has become everything. And by becoming everything, it has become nothing.

These wildly opposing ideas of what a leader looks like are part of the untethered feeling we have in our culture right now. It is unsettling. We have lost something essential and, at the same time, can't agree on what we are looking for. Perhaps it is not possible for leadership characteristics to be as universally agreed upon as the periodic table. Still, we could sooner agree on the best TV show of all time than agree on what constitutes a leader.

If you are a leader, it has never been more critical for you to dial in your own definition of leadership. If you don't know, others will determine it for you. A great place to start is to identify what concepts are a proxy for leadership to you. What concepts can stand in place of this all-encompassing word?

For instance, good judgment is a standard proxy for leadership. It is hard to imagine following someone who has poor judgment. After a string of poor hiring decisions and doomed strategies, most people are looking for the nearest exit.

Another standard proxy for leadership made popular in the classic Failure of Nerve is the ability to manage one's emotions. That may feel too low of a bar until you work with a leader who cannot manage their feelings. You'll never make that mistake again. Losing control of yourself means losing respect as a leader. Being an emotional robot is no better because authenticity is another proxy, but pounding fists, raising one's voice, or using name-calling when frustrated are universally off-limits for leaders. 

My definition of leadership has changed over the years and hopefully will continue to evolve as I learn. For me and my clients, it has helped to place some proxies in a grid to understand the development pathway of leadership better. Mine looks like this:

Moving towards being a leader is a journey, and like any other journey, our ability to arrive at the destination is helped tremendously by knowing where we are on the map in relation to where we hope to go. The most accomplished leaders have developed both competence (skills like communication and strategic thinking) and character (attributes like humility and self-awareness).

I think we all start out as Dangerous Fools. Very few are born with the natural competence, humility, and awareness required to lead others. Those who think leadership is something you are born with are often confusing leadership with charisma.

As we grow, we tend to favor either growing in our self-awareness or our skills. The journey is never a straight shot from Dangerous Fool to Trusted Leader. It is always a messy, winding journey, either through being a Well-Meaning Student or becoming a Brilliant Jerk. Sometimes both. These outer quadrants leave us with bumps, bruises, and wounds. No one makes it to the Trusted Leader space unscathed. Trusted leaders walk with a limp from their journey. Never trust a leader without a limp – it means they took a shortcut.

DANGEROUS FOOLS

You can spot a Dangerous Fool by the wide gap between how they see themselves and the reality of their actual performance. They may be early in their career, focused on making sure others know about their degrees, and less aware of their struggle to apply all that learning. Taking on a new role sometimes pulls one back into being a Dangerous Fool as they focus on posturing instead of an obvious need to upskill.

The danger in this quadrant is that we overestimate both our skills and awareness. As long as we tell ourselves we have it all figured out, we keep ourselves from figuring it out. The ideal path out is an "ah-ha" moment – a bright flash of awareness about our lack of skills that ushers in humility. That opens the door to Well-Meaning Student. Ideally, this comes from a coach, trusted friend, or personal epiphany instead of a performance review.

WELL-MEANING STUDENTS

Both Well-Meaning Students and Dangerous Fools are similar in their low skill, but the Student is self-aware while the Fool is not. Well-Meaning Students and Dangerous Fools are both navigating through sobering trainwrecks of poor decisions, bad hires, and failed strategies due to their poor skills, but Well-Meaning Students learn from these moments while Dangerous Fools do not. It takes tremendous perseverance to get through this stage, but it is the preferred route to Trusted Leader by far. Almost anyone can be coached on developing skills and competency, but you cannot coach someone into being humble and self-aware. You either have it or you don't. The route of the Well-Meaning Student is a through street, while the path of the Brilliant Jerk is too often a cul-de-sac on the leadership journey. 

BRILLIANT JERKS

For Brilliant Jerks, the pathway out of Dangerous Fool is a radical ownership of the need to improve skills and a relentless obsession over performance. These folks see how their lack of competency is holding them back, and they listen to podcasts, invest in seminars, and love words like clarity, discipline, and radical ownership. And it works for them. Sort of.

While they become skilled and accomplished, it is hard for Brilliant Jerks to continue the journey because they think they have already arrived. The hope for brilliant jerks is that the humiliation of honest feedback from colleagues about how painful it is to be around them will break through their icy facade and drive them to do the inner work to become self-aware and trusted.

Unfortunately, most Brilliant Jerks have an ego that gets in the way of their hearing and being transformed by feedback. Their skill development has exceeded their internal development. The accolades, awards, and promotions from their competence blind them to the reality that they have so far to go. It is possible but rare for Brilliant Jerks to ever move into the Trusted Leader arena.

If you are leading an organization and have a brilliant jerk on your team, you have a difficult decision looming ahead of you. Brilliant jerks are often a complicated combination of high-performing in their job while simultaneously torpedoing a healthy culture. They can be the top salesperson or fundraiser but tend to undermine others. They could be a rising team leader with a reputation for results but are passive-aggressive in managing their team. As the leader, you must decide between risking a short-term dip in revenue and production or being true to your values and upholding a culture that protects your people from jerks. Know this. The long-term benefit of keeping your culture "jerk-free" always overcomes any short-term pain of removing a brilliant jerk.

TRUSTED LEADERS

While the arrogance of Brilliant Jerks increases alongside their competence, it is the opposite in Trusted Leaders. Their arrogance decreases as their skill increases. It is a rare and beautiful thing to behold.

In my formative years, I coordinated a few different leadership conferences. I was a starry-eyed fan-boy, excited to meet several high-profile leaders whose books and talks had influenced me. I had assumed they were Trusted Leaders, but getting to know some of them shocked me into the reality that they were Brilliant Jerks instead. They could write a great book and entertain an audience from a stage but lacked the character to deserve such a following. Content creators, thought leaders and influencers seem such a far cry from Trusted Leaders.

Trusted leaders deflect credit to others, own their faults with courage and honesty while displaying sharp insight and competence. Brilliant jerks lead by needing to be the smartest person in the room, while Trusted Leaders somehow make the whole room smarter. Watching these folks move through the world restores your faith in humanity.

Here's to you as you journey on towards that Trusted Leader space!