If the Shoe Fits: Which Kind of Leader are You?
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
In an interview Robert Herjavec said,
If you can’t inspire the people around you, you are going to fail. If you can’t inspire the people around you, you should go sell real-estate, because that is probably one of the only businesses where you could make a lot of money working completely on your own. But I think if you want to build a great business, you’ve got to bring other people along, and nobody wants to be managed. People want to be led.
His comment reminded me of a post from a few years ago that I believe is worth repeating.
Ducks in a Row: Leadership or LeadershIt?
If you truly want a culture of innovation, then you also need to create a culture of leadership.
Last week I commented that if the ‘i’ in leadership is capitalized it changes leadership to leadershIt.
Whereas leadership can be a great motivator, leadershIt is a guaranteed demotivator.
Visions and other leadership functions done with an eye to self-aggrandizement aren’t likely to resonate whether done by positional leaders, leaders in the instance or those who aspire.
Because initiative and leadership are synonymous, leadership needs to be pushed out of the corner office and spread throughout the organization; doing so will encourage growth, creativity and innovation.
If leadership is the fertilizer then culture is the water, without which nothing will grow, and people are the seeds from which ideas come.
By spreading leadership evenly through out your company garden and watering regularly, leaving no unfertilized or dry patches in which a seed will be stunted or die, you assure yourself a bountiful harvest that will be the envy of your competitors. (Two follow-up posts have more on this topic here and here.)
This isn’t a new idea, just a new way of phrasing it; Lao Tzu said it best 4000 years ago, “To lead the people walk behind them.”
The one thing that remains constant in all these discussions is that you always have a choice—this time it’s between leadership and leadershIt.
Image credit: HikingArtist
