Role Clarity and Becoming a Wise Leader

Everybody seeks a role model who represents the idealized embodiment of a particular role one wishes to play. Self-help business books are filled with recipes for success to make you the best leader in your field. Others teach you how to be the best chef or the best parent. Yet it’s a futile exercise to attempt to be someone you are not. As long as you keep trying to become your role model, someone will always be ahead of you. Instead of imitating people you look up to, strive to develop your own practices rather than following others’ so-called best practices, so that you might end up as a role model to others one day. In other words, if you work on becoming a smarter leader, you can imitate others and perform better by their standards, but if you focus on becoming a wiser leader, you create your own playbook and lead by your own standards. In doing so, you will perform with better role clarity, since your authenticity will shine through your actions.

Several of our coaching clients and leaders who attend our leadership workshops are eager to discover their true selves. But during our initial interaction, they also often ask us: “How can I lead like Jack Welch or Steve Jobs?” or any other highly celebrated executive. We can’t help them with that, just as we can’t help you become somebody else by reading this book. We can only help you uncover your authentic self and your North Star (your noble purpose). It is up to you to use that insight to define your personal leadership style that is aligned with your North Star.

A decade ago while consulting for a large computer company, we met a high-level African American executive who felt that what she had to say was not taken seriously and that she was excluded from the decision making in her division, even though she was a member of the management team. She even adopted certain behaviors of her successful colleagues, but this did not change anything. She had no idea that the more she imitated her colleagues, the less respect she received from them. Once she became aware of this and developed her own approach to dealing with issues, she become much more comfortable with differences of gender and race and was able to project her own voice and ideas confidently.

Parents can find themselves in a similar situation of seeking authenticity. A friend of ours, Rachel, who is an attorney and mother of a two-year-old son, decided not to blindly follow child rearing philosophies defined by her mother or others in self-help books. Such books, like Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which looked at one Asian woman’s strict parenting model, lay out formulas for raising children that the authors suggest will result in a certain outcome—that the children will be smarter or perhaps a great athlete. Instead of following one of these books, Rachel said she wanted to be a parent “in a way that is aligned with who I am, with my own perspective and principles.” In other words, rather than following the parenting advice of others, Rachel is attempting to develop her own wisdom through experimentation. She encourages her son to explore and experiment without placing too many restrictions on him, allowing him to grow in an atmosphere of security and safety. Rachel told us that she is open to receiving parenting suggestions from friends and family, but she tries them out first and selectively adopts new practices that are aligned with her perspective and prove to have a positive impact on her son. In that sense, Rachel is acting with enthusiasm and excitement and discovering her role as a parent everyday.

Rachel is seeking authenticity in being a parent just as others do in being business leaders. Whether you are a parent or a leader, strive to infuse authenticity in the role you are performing. Wise leaders don’t lose themselves in their role; even while they are fully engaged in their role, they maintain emotional detachment. They don’t let the ups and downs or the successes and failures of their role affect their mood or their personality. As a result, they do what they think and feel is “the right thing to do” to serve a noble purpose instead of just doing “what is right” according to their job description—or their position in the organizational hierarchy. In other words, they don’t play their role in a way intended to please others—their boss or customers or investors, for example—but in a way that feels authentic to them.

Mark Milani, a former senior vice president at Oracle Corporation, is one such wise leader. In his role at Oracle, Milani had to manage the conflicting needs and expectations of several stakeholders: his top boss, Larry Ellison (founder and CEO of Oracle), who is a big picture leader and usually operates out of the red zone; his immediate boss, who was a committed operations leader and hence tended to operate in the blue zone; and his customers, who wanted everything to be delivered yesterday. Rather than trying to please all stakeholders at the same time, which would have emotionally and physical drained him, Milani learned to prioritize these stakeholders’ requests and manage their expectations differently. Here is how he put it: “I always did what I personally felt was the appropriate thing to do. I learned to sort out my priorities and address what is in the best interest of the company. I never let myself lose in the role I was playing or get emotionally engaged with what my boss wants me to, or what my customer wants me to do. Had I done that, I would not have lasted as long as I did in my job.”²⁴

Wise leaders like Milani discipline themselves to focus on what works and tune out the noise. In doing so, they cultivate staying power in their role without getting emotionally drained by it.