The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.
—John Maxwell
Leadership, Leaders, leadership teams, our leaders, etc.
In the corporate world, these terms are often used interchangeably with boss or manager; it has become yet another buzzword. Yet, people forget the original meaning of the word leader: “the one who leads.” A guide.
It is essential to keep the distinction in mind because of a fundamental difference between bosses and managers: While management can be assigned, leadership can only be earned.
As guides, leaders are people who successfully lead a group through a path, taking them where they need to be and eliminating, or minimizing, the dangers along the way.
For example: Imagine you’re on a safari.
The person in charge is inconsistent, insecure, constantly making bad decisions, and ignores the feedback and advice.
Would you trust this person? Would you go along with them or seek their guidance?
Imagine that on the same safari, someone else argues against the person in charge and starts giving consistently reasonable suggestions, shows a calmer demeanor, and is often listening to what the rest of the group has to say, using their judgment to make the right call and constructively disagreeing when they think it’s right.
Who would you instead follow?
Keeping the distinction between leaders and managers in mind is important for several reasons. First and foremost, it is one of the root causes of bad management, because when leadership is confused with management, it creates the impression that people are expected to follow a manager blindly. In reality, these managers still need to put in the work to become leaders and gain their report’s trust and respect. This misunderstanding can lead to friction and conflict, and hence lessens a manager’s effectiveness. Furthermore, it can also lead to a reduction or lack of ownership which in turn makes delegation harder because, while most teams have one manager, they can have multiple leaders.
For example, in software development teams, it’s not uncommon to have people who enjoy and focus more on the tech side and others who focus more on the product side.
While the former is best suited to make technical decisions, the latter likely knows the user better and better influences product directions. Each of these hypothetical people is a leader in their area of expertise, and neither of them needs to be the manager of the team.
Leadership is about guidance and orchestration, not about control. Good managers strive to hire people who are better than them because good managers are also good leaders and, as such, they want the whole team to succeed. This requires relinquishing control and having other people lead when they’re best suited, which incidentally helps a manager to scale its impacts and have broader influence in a company.
Management is also a stable role, but leadership can fluctuate over time. When a manager hires someone that’s more experienced in an area than they are, they don’t stop being managers of that area, but they can stop leading that area by delegating it to this new hire.
There’s a popular saying “People Don’t Leave Bad Jobs, They Leave Bad Managers.”
Whenever you hear that, keep in mind that they’re not leaving because they have bad managers, they’re leaving because they have no leaders and feel like they’re going nowhere.
It’s also important to keep in mind something that is often forgotten: leadership can be lost.
In the Same Way, That Leadership Can Be Earned; It Can Be Lost
While a manager can be assigned to a group at any given time, the factors keeping them in the role are external and procedural. On the other hand, leadership is defined by a person’s ability to influence their followers, and as a consequence, it’s much more subjective and fragile.
A company can remove a manager, but any follower can stop feeling someone is their leader, at any given time. This makes the work of maintaining your leadership something vital which requires constant maintenance, as gaining someone’s trust takes some time but losing their trust can happen in a heartbeat.
Leadership can be lost in the same way relationships can go south.
Not keeping up with your commitments, not showing the deserved respect to your followers, not being honest with them, or lacking enough transparency are among some of the most basic mistakes a people can make to lose their leadership and some of the easiest to avoid.
If we look back to our analogy of leaders as guides, things that reduce your followers’ confidence in the fact you’re taking them on the right path and with an acceptable amount of risk are signs that your leadership is dwindling. We cover this in more detail in the “Traits of Effective Leaders” section.
Leaders Can Come from Anywhere
As long as you have people following you, you’re a leader.
As a professional working in a group, if you’re executing your job well and gathering expertise that your group recognizes as valuable, you are a leader within that group.
Leadership is not defined by your actions but by how people around you perceive them.
Leadership Is Also a Skill
Leadership doesn’t have a formal Body of Knowledge1 (BoK) but can be considered both a research area and a practical skill.
It’s something that can be learned, developed, and mastered. Despite being romanticized as something people are “born with,” like any talent, it can be fostered and groomed.
Leadership
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Democratic leadership
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Autocratic leadership
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Servant leadership
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Transformational leadership
- 5.
Transactional leadership
It’s important to know this because different situations require different types of leadership. And while everyone has a natural style, an effective leader can adapt to a style that best fits the situation.
As an anecdote, and to highlight how different styles can be applied in different situations, let’s compare two easily understandable examples: Democratic and Authoritarian leadership.
People tend to look at those styles from a good vs. bad perspective, but they’re not opposites, just different. Each comes with its pros and cons and is a better fit for specific situations.
Let’s start with Democratic leadership. People tend to think of it as good leadership because it’s one that gives every member of a group a similar voice and gives each opinion similar weight.
It’s a style that fosters collaboration and can lead to high productivity and, in some ways, more creativity, but at the same time, it can be bureaucratic, lead to slower decision making, and be more prone to communication failures.
In a normal situation, those pros and cons tend to balance things out, and it’s easy to see why it’s one of the most adopted leadership styles in the corporate world.
That being said, it’s a style that could be extremely risky in situations with a high level of urgency like the ones that are life-threatening, metaphorically or literally speaking.
Let’s now take a look at Autocratic leadership.
People tend to skew away from the term. Autocratic, or Authoritarian, leadership evokes the image of a nasty boss telling people what to do and not embracing arguments.
But that’s the style firefighters adopt when dealing with emergencies.
When a house is on fire, hesitation can be fatal. Long discussions are harmful because every minute counts.
Do people in charge listen to others? Sometimes. But it’s under their discretion to decide what to do.
An example closer to this in the software development field are OnCall issues. Some companies even create “War Rooms”; ad-hoc groups responsible for tackling the issue at hand, with a “commander” responsible for making quick, hard decisions and directing people toward what’s believed to be the best solution.
While this is not a sustainable model, it’s helpful from time to time and should not be discarded from your leadership toolbox.
The differences between Democratic and Autocratic leaderships work to illustrate how different some styles can be because they are perceived as polar opposites. It also points out the often ignored fact that leadership styles are tools, and effective leaders know many styles and when to use them.
The other styles mentioned before: Servant, Transformational, and Transactional, are other interesting examples.
In Servant leadership, leaders act as if they work for their reports and not the other way around. In the Transformational style, they work through “transforming” followers into agents of change with the goal of changing an entire organization. In Transactional leadership, they work through a reward and punishment system, keeping performance through compliance and the model that describes the military and most outdated big corporations.
This list is by no means extensive, and we invite the reader to learn more about the many styles and know what serves them best.
Traits of Effective Leaders
If the core of leadership is the ability to lead, and have people willingly follow you, the traits of effective leadership follow the same principles.
As leaders work with people, effective leaders are effective because the people they work with trust them enough to follow their guidance, and trust is at the core of good leadership.
Traits
In a work environment, people are expected to do what their managers say, but if they don’t trust the person making the request or don’t agree with it, they won’t do it willingly or won’t do it at all.
People have a natural tendency to want to understand what’s being asked of them, which is reasonable, but in dynamic environments like the corporate world, not every decision can be discussed. Many times, factors like privacy concerns, regulations, or legal requirements stop people from discussing key aspects of projects.
There are too many variables and nuances that can make the reason behind decisions and requests unclear, which can lead to dissent and disagreement. While these aren’t necessarily bad, as disagreement is a normal part of building relationships, a leader whose every decision is questioned won’t be able to guide a group toward its goals.
The ability to gain trust built on relationships makes leaders shine. They build strong relationships with their team members, get to know them as people, understand what motivates them, and help team members feel like they’re part of a community and not just cogs in a machine.
This way they become more likely to buy into the leader’s vision and be willing to work hard to make it a reality.
But how do we build trust? Well, the first step is communicating.
Communication
An effective leader is also a good communicator. They know how to share their vision in a way that inspires others and can clearly articulate their expectations. People are more likely to follow a leader who can communicate effectively than one who can’t.
Communication is vital in any relationship, but it’s essential in the workplace because it’s the bridge that links the leader to followers.
Leaders need to help people understand why a project is important, what people’s roles in it are, and articulate what they expect from their team members. If they don’t understand what’s expected, they’re less likely to do it.
People also want to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves and that their work has meaning. Leaders who can inspire their team members and help them see their role in the bigger picture are more likely to get people to rally behind them. Communication is the way to do this.
When thinking about communication, as humans, we first think of the way we talk or verbal communication, but this is not the only form.
When it comes to communication, there are many different ways to do it. You have verbal communication, non-verbal communication, written communication, visual communication, and listening communication.
All of these are important in the making of an effective leader and they should make their best effort to be good at as many forms as possible.
For example, people tend to think that a good leader is one that’s good at telling people what to do, but great leaders also need to be good listeners.
They need to listen to their team members, understand their concerns, and address them in a way that shows they care. If people feel like their voices are being heard, they’re more likely to trust and respect their leader.
In turn, this leads to a more cohesive and productive team. And that’s what effective leadership is all about.
After communicating effectively, the second step to building trust is accountability.
Accountability
Accountability occurs when one reliably delivers on their commitment. By being consistent, people won’t doubt that you’ll do what you’re saying you’re going to do.
Leaders should demonstrate accountability every day and show in their behavior that they can be relied on to achieve results.
If we want accountability from our employees, we must model it as leaders. We can’t ask others to do something that we’re unwilling to do ourselves.
Being an effective leader requires being accountable for your actions and setting an example for those you lead. When people see that you’re reliable and consistent, they’ll be more likely to trust you and not break this trust.
By being the example, you start fomenting the same behavior in the rest of your team, and when you consider the broken window effect, you create an environment where everyone can be trusted. It creates a domino effect throughout the organization that can lead to higher performance and results.
When you make people accountable for their actions, you effectively teach them to value their work. Accountability can increase your team members’ productivity, skills, and confidence when done right.
It’s essential to notice a significant side-effect of accountability, which is simultaneously one of the most critical responsibilities of a leader: enabling an environment of high morale.
Accountability and high morale are tightly coupled with each other. In order to have one, you need the other.
Common mistake companies make is to confuse being nice with not being able to call out when someone is not being accountable. This is a slippery slope for many reasons being of the main ones the loss of morale.
No one likes working in environments where they feel people will just drop the ball and nothing will happen.
Leaders who practice accountability are able to constructively criticize actions without blaming individuals, and this practice will eventually permeate the leader’s organization creating a healthier environment where people can disagree without feeling threatened.
In a corporate setting, accountability is crucial in productivity because it eliminates the time and effort you spend on distracting activities and other unproductive behavior and will free your time up for more valuable things.
It’s even more important in remote work environments. While bad leaders and companies will fall into a pattern of closely monitoring remote employee activities, tracking what they’re doing every minute, and creating policing policies that can feel soul-crushing, effective leaders and their companies focus their energies on building trust and accountability so every employee can be relied upon. The concern around wasted time is not a worry anymore.
Being reliable and consistent
Fulfilling commitments
Modeling the behavior you want to see in others
Creating a culture of trustworthiness
A conceptual model indicates the four pillars supporting leadership accountability as reliable and consistent, model, fulfilling commitments, and a culture of trustworthiness.
Leadership accountability summarized
When a leader says, they’re going to do something. When faced with new information or receiving feedback and they don’t stop to reevaluate their plans this ceases to be accountability and becomes intransigence and can be perceived as high ego—one of the worst enemies of good leaders, which should be open to and good at learning new things and changing their minds.
Ability to Learn and Change Their Minds
It’s impossible to know everything.
This sounds like an obvious statement, but people, especially in the corporate world in management positions, often don’t act like they know that.
Each person is an island of knowledge—Revealed Knowledge, Rational Knowledge, Intuitive Knowledge, and Empirical Knowledge.
All of which every individual gathers throughout their lives through explicit or implicit means.
Aristotle famously wrote, “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”
This is a phrase that people use, often unconsciously, to demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect—a cognitive bias whereby people with lower knowledge in an area tend to overestimate their ability in this area while people with high knowledge tend to underestimate themselves.
Leaders should be aware of what they know, and what they don’t and that there’s always a chance that they don’t really know something they think they do, and the person next to them could have better knowledge.
When hiring a person to work with us, we try as hard as we can to find the best in their fields. We test them exhaustively in as many ways as possible to ensure they’re qualified.
So why do so many “bosses” ignore their advice and professional opinion when it doesn’t align with theirs?—the answer, while complex, can be boiled down to confusing bosses (managers) with leaders, as we discussed before.
Leaders should understand that they should leverage each follower’s specific knowledge to help the group achieve its collective goals. It’s part of their job to know what each person’s strengths are and how to incorporate every person’s expertise into the big picture. While doing so, they’ll frequently face new information that often will go against their knowledge and understanding and be persuaded when the situation requires it.
Being adaptable, seeing things from new angles, giving the benefit of the doubt, and changing their beliefs when faced with new learning are traits that simultaneously make a leader more effective and foster trust.
In his book, Persuadable: How Great Leaders Change Their Minds to Change the World,2 the author Al Pittampalli describes how cutting-edge research from cognitive and social psychology shows how a flexible mindset can become a competitive advantage.
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Consider the opposite.
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Update your beliefs incrementally.
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Kill your darlings.
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Take the perspective of others.
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Avoid being too persuadable.
Some of these are self-explanatory, and some take deeper consideration, but they all point to a clear fact: You should rely on your knowledge enough, but not more than on the knowledge of the group.
Or, as the author describes:
Confidence, consistency, and conviction are increasingly becoming liabilities—while humility, inconsistency, and radical open-mindedness are powerful leadership assets.
Trust, Communication, Accountability, and the Ability to Change their minds: All of these traits are essential to a leader, and while they are important on their own, they all have something in common: they’re about relationships.
Leaders need to relate with their followers, and they need to connect with the people who lead them, which is far easier said than done.
Relationships are among the hardest things for people to build and maintain. They touch our fears and hopes, insecurities and self-doubts, and force us to take a deep look at ourselves.
Work relationships are no exceptions. After all, most people spend a third of their days with their peers. But the two core traits that help leaders succeed. Traits that are the foundations of the ones previously discussed and are the foundations of effective leadership: Empathy and Courage.
Empathy and Courage
One might question why empathy is important for a leader.
But before talking about empathy, let’s clarify the distinction between empathy and sympathy. Mixing these two is a common mistake and one that is costly for leaders.
Sympathy involves understanding from your perspective. Empathy involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and understanding WHY they may have these particular feelings. Confusing sympathy with empathy might make you seem judgmental because using your experience as the baseline will lead you to compare things, instead of trying to understand another. Being judgmental is one of the worst flaws in a leader, if people fear what you think of them, why would they follow you? And if they don’t, are you still a leader?
Empathy, a key component of emotional intelligence, is a leadership skill that allows you to build trust and rapport, understand what people are really saying and identify their needs, feelings, and critical aspects for leaders to be effective: their motivations, and actions.
Understanding why people act the way they do and what makes them tick will help you guide how you communicate, and how to build trust with a person or a group. It will help you learn from others and keep them accountable while simultaneously increasing morale.
It’s a true win-win situation.
With all that being said, empathy is not always easy to exercise. Unfortunately, it’s not something that comes naturally to most people, unlike sympathy.
Listen with the intention to understand, not to reply. This means being present and fully engaged with the other person without judgment or agenda.
Ask questions to clarify what the other person is saying and how they feel about it. Avoid making assumptions!
Pay attention to non-verbal cues, such as body language and tone of voice. These can be just as important as the words that are spoken.
Practice mindfulness or being in the moment without judgment. This will help you be more present with others and truly understand their experiences and motivations.
Practicing empathy is possible, but it requires you to take chances. As with most things in life, “you don’t know until you try it,” and trying empathy means taking chances with other people’s feelings, which is understandably scary—and that brings us to courage.
Mark Twain said it best: Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.
Good leaders have their courage tested all the time. I am not exaggerating.
Courage to challenge someone’s image of themselves and say that they need to learn more.
Courage to call out unfairness.
Courage to expose controversial ideas.
Courage to admit they don’t know something.
Courage to give someone the benefit of the doubt, even when you feel you’d “do it” in a different way.
Courage to get out of your comfort zone and try to look through someone else’s eyes.
Courage to admit that they’re wrong.
Courage to send out messages to large audiences that could judge you.
Courage to say no. A lot. To people “above and below” you. Courage to make hard choices.
Courage to face the unknown.
Admittedly not all of these examples are specific to leaders, but when people depend on you to succeed, the fears are amplified, and the weight of your actions is multiplied.
And while leaders can come with different levels of experience and have various degrees of success, no one can be a leader without courage.
Conclusion
People who lived through the lifecycle of startups becoming bigger companies shared an experience that is a strange phenomenon.
They often notice that their ability to innovate and pace to build things slows down. There’s also a reduced feeling of ownership and impact.
If one stops to think about it, this is a bit nonsensical—having more people, alongside their talents and skills, should lead to a group accomplishing more, right?
Although this cannot be attributed to a single factor, there’s a common trend with this growth and a major difference from more established organizations to early-stage startups.
The former has more structure, resources, well-defined roles, and responsibilities.
The latter requires more grit and everyone taking the initiative to get things done.
During the beginning of a company or any project, for that matter, all the traits previously mentioned; trust, communication, accountability, learning and adaptability, empathy and courage—happen naturally.
Every member of the team works hard to motivate each other. They don’t want to be the ones to let the ball drop because they care about the people around them and have a sense of shared responsibility.
Everyone wants to feel that they’re part of helping something to succeed and want to see themselves as an essential part of it.
In sum, every person is a leader, to some extent.
Keeping the difference between management and leadership in mind can help groups of any stage maintain the same feeling as you get in a startup, with likely the same outcomes.