Why We Remember Tough Leaders

This musing was triggered by an innocent WhatsApp forward from a colleague that said – If you want to make everyone happy don’t be a leader, be an ice cream salesman.

Great leaders don’t blame the tools they are given, they sharpen them. Comfort zones at best cultivate a status quo, a windless stasis equal to decline. Good leaders know that the pre-cursor to achievement are the stretchmarks of the mind and capability. Often, successful leaders of even thriving businesses tend to adopt a threatened, crisis mind-set, even if for short periods of time, to trigger change and innovation to stay at the top. Refer Only the Paranoid Survive if in doubt.

I start with the premise, as suggested by Ralph Nader, that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. I pay a special tribute to the few people I have worked with where we shared the same world view, frictionless alignment and worked together as if by magic – this is as close you get to workplace heaven. But I’d really like to focus on 2 types – Lightning Rod and Dead Wire.

Whether these people are slightly more tyrannical or more avuncular is probably defined by the quantum of happiness in their childhood, and who shaped their world view. But I have always felt positively challenged by the Lighting Rod - electric, thinking, driven leaders. Whip smart, questioning and always driving you to a higher level of capability and skill. This is the kind of person who would provide enough internal challenge so that all external challenges and tough situations seem easy to handle – you learn to navigate workplace issues as you would a delicate soufflé rather than a tough steak.  Leaders who are boot camp for the mind – engendering a certain discomfort but delivering the stretch marks of the mind – working through the entire playbook so that the competitive game is almost fun. And what kind of discomfort is this? Well, if you are too structured and polite you will find your discomfort in the rude and creative. If you are execution driven but uncaring for strategic rigour you will find your discomfort in a leader driven by strategy who will question you on why you want to do what you want to do. If you are all conventional efficiency and you work with a leader who is a technology maven. Bosses who stress integrity, no short-cuts, and the right way – come what may! If you do not wish to be blindsided by events and circumstances pray for bosses like these - who [sigh] much like perfect love, complete you.

Possibly it is the nature of all life, society, even survival that when we get all neutral, socially correct we feel the discomfort of a more aggressive leadership. After periods of strife and want even nations need to adjust to less militant, clear visioned nation builders. The Yin and Yang always in a tussle for that needle-pin balance! And not all of us are lucky enough to always work with a cocktail of Good to Great/ Level 5 leaders with a dash of the Sounds of the Forest type intuitive listening of the Korean fable.

This may seem like an episode of They Also Exist – but on rare occasions I have had the opportunity of working in teams led by Dead Wires - bosses lifted to their mantle by an errant, perhaps fortuitous gust of fate. This experience comes close to the Lao Tzu Gold standard, almost - A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. Think back to a time when you worked with a leader and the only question in your mind was – Who hired him? This experience comes with learning too – because in a competitive environment it provides you an opportunity to do 2 things – apply yourself to the task with a higher level of focus and intensity than would otherwise be required, and to ensure that the team [including the boss] look good when the results are tallied up. This is the making of an environment that engenders ‘leadership from the middle’ instead of the top – and allows you to experience a certain self-empowered leadership and innovation. Good only for short doses though because it’s always necessary, in my view, to have clear and proximate sight of the leadership high water mark.

While it may be true in a certain environment that people work like horses because the boss is riding them, the sensitive may have noted that I have steered clear of the experience of the pure toxic, tyrannical leaders [or leaders who wish to infect you with their paralysis] because the faster you put distance in that relationship the better. After all it’s the oldest adage that people do not leave good jobs, they only leave bad bosses. And I remember a client telling me once over a quiet beer – I would much rather be disliked and deliver great results than be a popular leader who has to preside over a large scale lay-off. So, is tough love the schizzle or is it just an excuse for bad behaviour?