Leadership Do's and Dont's

culled from:management.about.com

Leadership is the most over-analyzed, thoroughly dissected, and utterly confused topic in business. Too many leadership writers, myself included, spend too much time complexifying the idea of leadership and not enough time bringing leadership back to simple ideas that matter. Me and my fellow authors have become the Legion of Legion Complexifiers (LLC). Instead of telling readers, “Be sure to create opportunities for those you lead”, we say “Optimize the strategic value-added proposition.” Whatever-the-hell that means.
It took a brief conversation with a very wise person to bring me back to what matters most about leadership. My five-year-old son Ian got to be class leader for the day. “How cool is that, little buddy!” I said. “What did you get to do as class leader?”

He replied, “I got to open doors for people.” Seven simple but profound words caused me to resign from the LLC. Now in my work as a leadership development professional I spend my time sharing simple ideas that any new or seasoned leader can grasp and use. What follows are a few easy-to-understand leadership Don’ts & Dos.


DON’TS

Confuse dominance with leadership. Just because a person is the loudest in the room doesn’t mean they are the leader in the room. Being bigger, louder, and smarter doesn’t equate with leading. There are plenty of dominate big, loud, and smart people not worth following. Domination involves control and people hate being controlled. Especially controlling people. People will be more drawn to a quiet leader who roles up his or her sleeves and does real work and offers grounded advice than a dominant control freak.
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Over-focus on the ends and under-focus on the means. Too many leaders hyper-focus on results, barking, “Gimme another golden egg, dammit!” Oh sure, they’ll pay lip service to how much they value people. But all they really care about is pushing out more production. When production becomes more important than people, performance ultimately suffers. Results (ends) come from people (means), and if you treat people poorly you’ll get poor results. Period.

Open your mouth when eating the cookie. In his book, The No Asshole Rule, leadership author and Stanford professor Robert Sutton explains how leaders often exempt themselves from the behavioral norms they expect others to uphold. In one leadership study, two people were instructed to work on a problem-solving puzzle while another person was appointed their leader and told to direct their work. During the study, a researcher walks in with a plate of five cookies. Unbeknownst to the three people, this is the real study. Interestingly, leaders would often take two of the five cookies while the other people took one each. Worse, most leaders would eat with their mouths open! Unconsciously, when we’re in a position of leadership we feel entitled to live outside of the rules.

DOs

Lead yourself first. Integrity is attractive. People want to follow leaders whose actions and words are in lock-step. Start by identifying your deepest values. What’s on your flag? What do you stand for, and what are the non-negotiable principles you refuse to compromise. Develop a point of view on leadership. Not just what you believe, but what you have come to know based on nitty gritty experience. Write down your own definition of leadership. Finally, rate yourself on how well you’re living into your own definition of leadership on a scale of 1 (badly) to 10 (perfectly).

Motivate with opportunity, not fear. Benjamin Disraeli, former prime minister of Great Britain, once said, “Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.” People will move mountains for you as long as they know that after the mountain is moved they get something in return. Lots of leaders try to motivate people by transmitting their fears to the workforce. They’ll furlough their brow talking about “what keeps me awake at night.” Guess what? Employees don’t care about what keeps you up at night. They want to know about what gets you up in the morning.

Show ‘em who you really are. Every now and then you’ve got to step outside of your role as leader and let them see the “real” you. People want to know that you’re someone who knows your roots and that you haven’t forgotten where you came from. People want to know that the power that accompanies leadership hasn’t gone to your head, that you still pull up your own britches, and that you “get” that leadership is a privilege, not an entitlement. Few things are as important to leadership as confident humility. The best leaders–the ones we want to follow–are the ones who are comfortable enough in their own skins that they put others first. Confidently humble leaders know that leadership is not about the leader; it’s about those the leader is leading.