Leadership, but for the ordinary.
What the majority of us will end up doing as leaders.
Who is a leader for you?
Someone with a striking personality that is loved by everyone. Someone who makes all the right calls with a set of followers who are willing to follow that person to every corner of the world, no questions asked. Well, yes, that is a leader. In fact, a successful one. If you have the influence to push your agenda to others and make others believe that it is what they want and make them truly work for that goal as it is one of their own, you can proudly call yourself a leader. But is that the only leadership type the world needs? Is that the right kind of leadership that has the highest possibility of making you successful in your career?
Let’s think about such a leader. One who drives with charisma makes all the calls and always stays on top. Someone who takes pride in making sure that it is her idea that is always being pushed and not someone else’s. This is basically almost all the leaders of nations, both good ones and bad ones. They are not only leaders of nations but such leaders can also be seen everywhere. Without name-calling, let’s look at the common elements of such leaders and how such leaders function. The biggest flaw I see in such leaders is that there is tremendous pressure to always ensure that you are right. Your whole role is to always stay on top and safeguard your stance. The problem with that is, while you might be right on many occasions, there could be cases where you are wrong. But you can not afford to accept it because it means you are giving up on your biggest edge. Even if you do not intend to do any wrong, only in a utopian world can you be right one hundred per cent of the time.
Secondly, these kinds of leaders are very hard to come by. For starters, you need to be an extrovert, born at the right time at the right place, associate with the right kind of people and go through a unique set of experiences. Such leaders of course can change the world, but they can also break the world. Either way, the chances of you (the reader) or me (the writer) being such a leader is very slim. We are normal people having ordinary careers, looking for ways to be better at working with ordinary teams. For us, studying and mastering the art of being such a unique leader does not provide much help.
So, what does leadership mean in our context?
Firstly, we no longer live in an information age. We do not have any edge in knowing anything. If you are a leader of a team, you would know the same information your peers or subordinates would know. Most of the questions we are trying to solve in our work are things that we can not be solved by ourselves individually. That is why we work in teams. Therefore, being a leader does not mean you know all the answers. It is literally impossible to know everything better than your teammates, including your subordinates. Because if you knew all that, you will not be in a team. So, in the ordinary context, being on top of everything is not expected of a leader.
Instead, what I think would help is someone who understands everyone on a deeply personal level. Someone who not only knows the technical strengths of a person but also their personal attributes. Someone who can extract the best of everyone, even at times when you have limited knowledge of what they do. A leader should be able to curate perfect environments that suit everyone to thrive. It is highly dynamic, people change their moods and their attitudes alter. As a leader, you need to be sensitive to all these and constantly make slight adjustments to accommodate that ideal work environment. Sounds easy? Absolutely not!
Is there a foolproof way to develop that skill? I honestly do not know. I would love to learn.
But here is what I do know. You do not have to be an appointed leader to start practising those skills. You can be a member of a team without any formal authority to lead. You can still use the dynamics to practice leadership. You should not wait till you become a leader to practice leadership. Understanding people and trying to create an environment where they can thrive is a skill that I do not think anyone can learn from reading books or blogs like this. Instead, it is something that you can only master by practice.
The modern work culture demands people who can thrive in teams. This goes for leaders as well. Truth be told, you will not get a chance to deliver inspiring speeches that give the listeners chills. Instead, you get opportunities to understand people and the rapidly changing dynamics of the teams. Instead of exhausting yourself to be on top all the time, you learn to follow and trust the experts within your team to do their job. Of course all the obvious elements of a leader such as being accountable, reliable, approachable etc works. This blog is not trying to teach you how to lead. My intention is just to show you another aspect within that large gene or leadership that might have been overlooked.
You will not get movies made for this type of leadership. But this is what is expected of the majority of us.
