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1. Performance does not equal leadership.
There is no correlation between being good at your job and being a good leader. There are people who are great salespeople who make terrible sales managers. There are brilliant creatives who make terrible creative directors. Tommy Lasorda was a so-so ballplayer, he was a fantastic coach. Isaiah Thomas was a great ballplayer, he was a terrible coach. There’s no correlation, because what leaders like coaches and teachers do is get the best out of their people. They may not be the best at what they do.
In fact, it’s a word of caution because people who are high performers with low trust, those are toxic leaders. And so often in our organizations, we promote people solely because of their performance, ignoring the fact that nobody trusts them. And we literally are sabotaging our own organizations by promoting these people and creating an environment of toxic leadership. That’s what a toxic leader is, a high performer with low trust. So if we’re going to put someone in a leadership position, of course we can consider their performance, but we must consider how people trust them and how good they are at social skills. It’s 100% necessary.
2. Leadership has nothing to do with rank.
Leadership has nothing to do with rank. I know many people who sit at very senior levels of organizations who are not leaders. They have authority, and we do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who sit at the middle or lower down in organizations that have no authority, and yet they’re absolutely leaders because they’ve made a choice, a choice to look after the person to the left of them, and a choice to look after the person to the right of them. If there is someone in middle management who chooses to be a leader, it does come at great personal risk, because the willingness to stand up against injustice or say, “You may not lay off my people. You want to save 10%, I’ll save you 10%, but not at the expense of my people,” may cost you your job. You may be the one that gets in trouble.
Leadership comes with very real risks, that’s why not everyone is cut out to be a leader. That’s why they give us all the perks, all the respect and the additional money and all of this, it’s because it comes at a cost. So if anyone chooses to be the leader they wish they had, remember it’s hard work, and the risks are very, very real, but the rewards are incredible. Because what you see is people rally to take care of you. What you see is people rise up and achieve more than they thought they were capable of. What you see is the organization grows as a whole because the people care, not because the people were told to. And you sit back and it’s the most remarkable feeling in the world to know that the people are better versions of themselves, more capable, simply because you were willing to take the risk to help them. It’s amazing, just like being a parent, it is magical.
3. Leaders must visit the frontlines.
Leadership is a human enterprise. We cannot lead from behind a desk, and you cannot lead from a spreadsheet. You can manage a project, but you can’t lead a project. You can’t lead a company, you can run a company. You can only lead people. Just as you cannot parent just through texting, and you can’t coach a team just through email, so too can you not lead the people inside your company from behind a desk, you have to get out. It’s called eyeball leadership. Strolling around, having lunch with people, getting to know them, knowing the names and faces of the people who supposedly you care about and who are willing to offer you their blood, sweat, and tears to see your vision come to life.
The least we can do is leave our desks and take an interest in who they are, sit in on their meetings, offer feedback when necessary, and just be available. It means so much. It’s why generals visit the front lines. They don’t have to talk to every soldier, marine, airman, or sailor, they just have to give the sacrifice of time and energy. We know their time is valuable and yet they showed up for us. It’s a huge, big deal. Eyeball leadership is massive, and leadership is always an interpersonal and human experience, always.
4. Leaders can’t lead with social media.
Social media is the next new medium. First there was the printing press, then there was the radio, then there was the television, now we have the internet. It’s a new medium, and it offers us huge benefits to communicate and spread our messages, and it also allows us to do business at a scale we never could do before, reach an audience we could never talk to.
But it doesn’t replace leadership. You can’t lead somebody posting Instagrams of what a good organization looks like. That’s all fine and good, that’s marketing. And that’s fine if you’re trying to advertise something, but it doesn’t replace good old-fashioned leadership. It’s another medium that we can use to help spread our message and get the word out, but leadership unfortunately is the same as it’s always been, just like relationships are the same that they’ve always been. They’re human.