The Most Important Trait of Great Leaders
I’ve worked with many great leaders in my career, and some of them were even managers. We often conflate management with leadership, but they are not the same. In fact, they are quite different. Regardless of the source, leadership is a force multiplier for any team. With great leadership, 1 + 1 = 3 or 5 or 10. Without it, 1 + 1 often equals 1.
So, what is leadership? While the definition is simple, understanding it, internalizing it, well, that’s gonna take a bit.
Imagine you and I go hiking to see a waterfall. After a pleasant drive, we get to the trail head. “Follow me,” I say, and we’re off. We take a right and a left and go off trail a bit. No waterfall. We backtrack and start over. At some point, you’re wondering if I even know the location of this mythical falling water. In fact, I have no idea if it exists. I think it’s there. I’ve heard about it, but at best, I have vague directions to find it. You’ve followed me, but, unfortunately for you, I wasn’t a leader.
Take a moment to think about the story above? What was I missing? What would a leader have done differently? Once you’re done, let’s better understand what a leader is by understanding what a leader is not. We’ll start with defining a manager.
What Is a Manager?
To better understand leadership, we need to fully understand the manager’s role. It will help us distinguish between the two concepts. At its core, management is an administrative job. Work needs to be completed and the manager is responsible for all of it. In this capacity, managers assign resources, check statuses, and remove blockers along the way. It’s not very glamorous, but it is the most basic aspect of the job. The fun doesn’t stop there. My current manager recently spent hours ordering nice jackets for all of us.
He received them in bulk — had to ship each one individually from there. With the decline of secretaries and admins, this falls on the manager. That big meeting coming up, guess who prepares it? How about the status update for the executive team or ensuring the on-call rotation is working right? Yup. That’s being a manager. Don’t forget meetings. At 7am. 3pm. 9pm. Midnight. Most managers spend the majority of their time in meetings.
The basic responsibilities are a lot of work and the work is rarely completed during normal hours. Preparing presentations. That’s for nights and weekends. Reporting out some new metric management has decided is critical right now. Nights and weekends. Shipping those Christmas gifts? You guessed it, nights and weekends. Days are for meetings, not work. Most of my managers work longer hours than I do. It’s an unwritten requirement. So, what can a manager do?
Let’s say a manager has excellent administrative skills. She trains up those around her and enables them to take on more responsibility. This frees her up for higher-value work and allows growth for employees. The team meets deadlines. Everyone is doing quality work. That’s great, effective administration. Go manager! Here’s the thing. Many would call that leadership, but leadership hasn’t entered the picture yet. Why is that?
Is the team doing the right work? Is the team building toward something greater? We’ve all spent way too much time doing low-value work or working months on projects that never provide value. Sometimes we work on ad-hoc requests that do nothing but prepare pre-conceived narratives for some other manager in the company. Leaders don’t foster wasted effort like that.
Managers can lead a team without providing leadership.
Can You See It Yet?
Let’s redo our hiking anecdote. Imagine I say, “There’s an amazing waterfall we should see.” It’s difficult to get to, but I know the way. Neither of us are prepared for the hike, but that’s OK. I have a plan. We will start by climbing smaller mountains twice per week. This will prepare us for the journey. After two months of progress toward our goal, we take that hike and the waterfall is glorious!
Take a moment to compare that version with the one where I nearly got you lost searching for an unknown waterfall. What are the differences? How does your opinion of me change? More importantly, how does your willingness to follow me evolve from one story to the next? When you answer that, you’ll understand leadership.
The one defining quality of leadership is vision. The ability to clearly describe a better future state and communicate how to get there. Have you ever worked with someone like that? They had a destination for the team and concrete steps along the way. That’s leadership. That’s someone people will follow. True leadership, leading with a vision, is an essential feature of high-performing organizations. Without vision, we are lost. Taking random rights and lefts hoping to achieve some nebulous measure of success.
A fantastic leader I once worked for compared our company to a cruise ship. Engineering was the engine that powered the boat. Our founders were the captain steering the ship. Sales and product were the crew members ensuring a great experience for guests. Our vision was clear. Connect the buy side with the sell side in equity capital markets. It was the single purpose of the company’s existence. Everything we did focused on that vision.
Whenever we had a decision to make, we simply asked ourselves, “Will this help us connect the buy side with the sell side in equity capital markets?” Easy peasy. When things got tough and problems arose, we didn’t falter. We had a vision and relentlessly sailed toward it. Through storms and waves, we always knew where we were headed. Sometimes we went off course, but checked our intended destination and adjusted. That’s what having a vision can do. That’s what leadership provides.
Conclusion
Leadership transforms companies and teams. Without the vision true leaders provide, we are like clueless hikers, meandering through the forest hoping to see something worthwhile. I’ve worked with a lot of great leaders and many were individual contributors who had a vision for the team. Maybe that’s you. Maybe, that could be you. If you don’t have a true leader to follow, be that leader.
