The Elements of Leadership

My last post about leadership talked about Bo Schebechler’s famous speech to his Michigan football team called “The Team, The Team, The Team.”  It emphasizes putting The Team ahead of everyone else including the head coach.  Servant leadership is a key element to strong effective leadership.  I’m going to highlight some other elements that I feel are equally important.

One of the foundations of being a good leader is honesty.  You need to be honest with your team, your customers and yourself.  How many times have we read about companies that made millions or billions of dollars only to find that the company as built on a smoke-screen of lies.  Enron’s C-level management stole $74 billion from shareholders.  Honesty is always the best policy.

Another very important element of good leadership is integrity.  Not only being honest, but having a good, strong moral character is key.  Leaders who have questionable moral character have that dark cloud over their heads.  Do you know what the leaders in your company stand for and believe in?  If you don’t, find out.

Tied very closely with integrity is trust.  Leaders with questionable integrity are difficult to trust.  Immorality is the enemy of business.  We’ve all done the test of trust at team building events when you fall backwards and trust that the person behind you is going to catch you.  You have to trust that the person behind you is going to catch you.  It’s the same in business.  It is much easier to do business with people you know and trust.

One element that is often forgotten is compassion.  Are your leaders compassionate to others? Do they contribute to charitable organizations with time and talents in your community?  How are your leaders giving back to the community?  Have you ever seen or can you envision your leaders working in a soup kitchen to help those less fortunate?  Do you serve your community?

To be a leader, you need to be courageous.  They take chances and do things that others won’t.  They are brave facing strong competition and are often criticized, but still stand strong through adversity.

One of the key drivers of any good leader is passion.  The leaders that have impressed me the most are ones that have a fire in their belly about what they are doing.  They love what they do and love doing it with the team around them.  If you don’t love what you are doing, do yourself and your team a favor.  Do something else.

The best, most effective leaders that I have observed are overflowing with humility.  Arrogance is another enemy of business.  Leaders don’t know everything.  Some leaders think that they have to always have the answers.  Good leaders don’t, but they do know where to get them. Good leaders have a great deal of experience and expertise, but they realize that they don’t know everything.  They surround themselves with talented people that are experts in their fields.  It is through this diverse and talented team who offer recommendations and suggestions to the leader that the leader grows and helps the team and the company grow.

The final element of good leadership is being experienced. You can implement all of the elements of leadership above, but if you don’t have the hands-on experience in the marketplace, you are trying to lead from theories and concepts, not real-world trials and tribulations.  A good leader is battle-tested.  They’ve been there, done that.  The other leaders of the company should be battle tested too so when they come together to lead the organization, their collective experiences should be shared and best practices should be gleaned from them.

To summarize, the elements a good leadership are:

• Servant – Serving others and putting the team first
• Honesty – Being honest with your team, your customers and yourself
• Integrity – Be of strong ethical and moral character
• Trust – Trust your team and be trustworthy
• Compassion – Give of your time and talents to those who need it in your community
• Courageous – Be brave and fight what you believe in
• Passion – Love what you do and appreciate those around you.  Passion is contagious.
• Humility – Humble yourself.  You don’t know everything.  Surround yourself with people who you can learn from.
• Experienced – Learn and grow from your experiences.

People like Bo Schembechler, Ronald Reagan, Pope Francis and others have demonstrated these elements and helped make them very effective leaders.

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