What is Real Leadership?

By Jay S. Holmes

There is a “subject” that gets everyone’s attention.  At the local bookstore, there are 112 books that have this “subject” in its title.  There is even a book that addresses it for “dummies”.  Do a quick search on the web and you will find 45 million related items.  Many people teach it.  Several universities have majors in it.  In the business world, it is often misused and sometimes abused.  It is often confused with the term management.  American businesses spend $15 billion on it annually.  Everyone wants it, few understand it and even fewer achieve it.  It is leadership.

Harry Truman said, “A leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it.”  George Patton said that, “Leadership is action, not rank” Ulysses S. Grant said that, “Leadership is making decisions” and Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Leadership is dealing in hope.”   Four well known leaders…four different opinions on leadership.

In the business world, many of us have seen managers who are persuasive, make decisions, display optimism and initiative, but are they real leaders?  As management guru Warren Bennis states, “Managers do things right.  Leaders do the right things.”  Over the years, I have observed managers who were more concerned about looking good to their superiors than they were about doing the right thing for their organization and the people they were entrusted to lead.  Too often, this is the result of our lack of understanding of what it means to be a real leader.  Typically, we promote individuals to positions of authority based on their technical knowledge and formal education, rather than their ability to truly lead, as if bestowing a title upon them will automatically qualify them to lead people.

Before you can build an outstanding organization, successfully execute a strategy, gain market share or develop a high performance team culture, you must have leadership.  Our companies are a reflection of their leadership.  For our purpose, we will say that management is about administration, or doing the things we do--tasks such as planning, budgeting, strategy development, sales and marketing and the due diligence process.  Leadership is about inspiring, motivating and influencing employees to do their jobs in an outstanding manner.

Essentially, leadership is about people. Sounds simple, but anyone who has had to lead a group, whether it was a project, a department, a division or an entire organization, will agree that inspiring, motivating and influencing is a great deal more difficult than it sounds.

The U.S. military has studied and taught leadership for the past two centuries.  Each service branch has its own formal schools. The service academies and war colleges teach leadership for entire careers, not for just two days or even a week. In 1948, the United States Army adopted the following set of desired leadership traits, which they teach in the acronym:

JJ DID TIE BUCKLE

Justice Judgment Decisiveness Integrity Dependability Tact Initiative Enthusiasm Bearing Unselfishness Courage Knowledge Loyalty Endurance

I use these 14 traits as the template for teaching leadership at The Compass Leadership Group. All are important. During our seminars with corporate management teams, we ask the participants to select two “imperative traits” from the template that real leaders must possess.  Imperative traits are traits that a leader cannot be without.  As one might imagine, there is a lot of debate amongst the groups and there are no wrong answers as each organization may require different traits, which is evidence of what is commonly called “situational leadership”.

In my experience as the head of several financial services organizations and throughout my service in the Marine Corps, I have found that the two most imperative traits for a leader to possess are (in order of importance): Integrity and Unselfishness. I choose to call these imperatives when taken together as real leadership. 

Integrity

Dwight D. Eisenhower said “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible.”

In today’s news headlines we are constantly bombarded with stories that feature a lack of integrity by our political, military, media, sports, religious and business leaders. In recent years, situations surrounding companies like Enron, Tyco and Arthur Andersen have cost many hard working people their jobs, their savings and have had significant impact on the commercial finance industry both directly (charge-offs) and indirectly (increased financial reporting requirements). 

The reason that integrity is so imperative in real leadership is because it serves as the vital catalyst to all the other traits. It is the foundation on which trust is built.  Trust is an extremely important by-product of a leader’s integrity.  Good relationships cannot exist without trust, whether they are marriages, businesses or customer relationships.  In times of change, which many of us have become accustomed to over the last few years, the first question a company’s employees ask themselves is “do I trust my boss and the members of the management team?”  If the answer is no, then they will be apprehensive of new initiatives or putting forth the kind of effort that drives organizations to be great.  They may go through the motions, but they will not commit to an individual or an organization they do not trust.

For those in positions of authority, it is important to realize that even the smallest things can have a big impact on trust if done without integrity.  In fact, many people are not even aware of the fact that they are losing their organization’s trust.  For example, when a person in authority shows favoritism, their people see it.  When managers encourage people to stretch the truth to make the sale or get a deal approved, their people see it.  When those in authority criticize their people in public, they lose their employees’ trust.  Many times, it isn’t necessarily what managers do, but rather what they do not do.  If senior management never reinforces the company’s code of conduct/ethics and demonstrates questionable integrity through offhand comments or actions, employees perceive that ethics and integrity are not important.  This can manifest itself in many ways in the organization, several of which can set the company up for a major integrity crisis, scandal or fraud.

The challenge with integrity is that it is easy to make the right decision when the issue is at one extreme or another, however, it is the “gray area” that those in positions of authority often find themselves and how they act in those moments can often define their ability to lead for many years to come.

Unselfishness

The second imperative leadership trait is that a real leader thinks of being a responsible and unselfish person rather than a privileged person.  One of my favorite quotes on this subject comes from Colin Powell.  He states, “If the troops are cold, you’re cold.  But make sure you don’t look or act cold.  Corporate leaders ought to learn that.  Too often, those at high levels don’t quite understand the sacrifices and hardships of those at the bottom.”  A real leader avoids using their position for personal gain or pleasure at the expense of others.

Taken a step further, real leaders understand that it is their duty to serve those under them and to take care of their people.  This doesn’t mean your company has to implement a “country club” culture where everyone in the organization is pampered.  Being an unselfish leader does not mean that a leader is weak or a wimp. In fact, taking care of your people often means providing them with a demanding work environment where they are constantly challenged and have to work hard and grow both personally and professionally.  However, it also means that management does not ask the “rank and file” to make sacrifices alone.  For example, perhaps your company can afford to get rid of executive reserved parking or can eliminate other “perks” that management has enjoyed. Executive “perks” only foster a feeling of separation or estrangement particularly in times of corporate crisis.

In tandem with being unselfish is the practice of treating your people with dignity and respect.  Surveys show that most (65%) employees leave their current employers because of the work environment and not because of a higher paying opportunity.  A recently published survey revealed that there is a strong correlation between a person’s self image and whether he treats others with respect and dignity. Real leaders raise the self image of their employees and their employees in turn respond favorably to customers and co-workers. The old ways of leading by command and control or barking orders is largely ineffective in today’s business world.  What is interestingly common between these two points and the elimination of management “perks” is that focusing on them and implementing change programs where needed often do not cost very much, but are incredibly valuable in bridging the divide between managers and the people they wish to lead.

The bottom line is if you care about your people and demonstrate you are willing to bear more of the burden without the “perks”, you will inspire them to want to achieve the team’s goals. 

Real Leadership is never easy.  It is characterized by the two imperative traits of integrity and unselfishness.  Good managers can be technically competent, have  charming personalities, and display decisiveness and good judgment.  However, if they do not aspire to have these two traits, then they will not be able to gain trust, influence and the ability to inspire their people to commit to a common set of objectives with the same intensity as if they were their own.  I always end my seminars by asking the participants if they are committed to becoming real leaders. If the answer is yes, then I have armed them with concepts they can apply to achieve results within a ninety-day period that will begin to transform their company.  However, I make it clear to them that if they have integrity issues within their organizations all of the other traits are meaningless. Without the cornerstone of integrity, those issues cannot be fixed in ninety days or ever.