On being a leader

Being a leader is something which have been written a lot about. There are many approaches to defining a good leader and how you can become one.

I read the latest magazine from my union about leadership, and I got some thoughts about that.

I have been thinking of sharing my own ideas around areas that are talked about a lot, but not necessarily in an honest and true way. So many things are just presented in a nice way, that feels good for the reader, but doesn't reflect reality in a practical way. I would like to change that, I want the hard truth, because that's better in the long run.

I base my ideas on what I read and experience. Sometimes I might have ideas that are against the current fad, others are not that developed yet. That's also the meaning of it all, if we all just read the same things and already processed thoughts, we don't have to think for ourselves and improve our character. Everything that makes you reflect is great.

So here we go, something about leadership today.

The paper I read was in Finnish, and it was all about leadership. Or perhaps it was about managers, because it seems like it could fit too. In Finnish there is no exact word for manager, there is one for leader, johtaja.

There is a difference between manager and leader, and a good exercise is to make a mind map on your own around these 2 terms.

Is there a difference? A manager makes it possible for others to succeed with resources, etc. A leader does that too. A leader leads people and you don't need to be a formal leader to be a leader. I don't go into this any deeper now. There are some differences yes, to be a manager is seen as not so interesting nowadays.

A leader works in many functions and there is a need for different ones in companies. We all know that.

What we don't know is that a leader should be matched with a specific company at a specific time and phase, because it's more about a timing thing than an ever-present thing.

You can have a great track record, and still not be able to succeed in your new leadership role, it's so based on context.

In the book "the hard thing about hard things" by Ben Horowitz, I learned all about the contextual fact and that it's more about finding the right company and situation for you, rather than becoming the best overall leader.

In Finland we often look at this person is either a good leader or not, based on whether this person succeeded or not in the role. We don't look so much on the context of the environment, what is the role of the employer? Who has the responsibility for potential success? I believe we look a little too much on the individual, instead of taking the situation in account.

Based on this evaluation, a person is either seen as good or bad. I believe it's too simple, a leader cannot succeed only on their own.

Then there are all the individual factors of a leader. Communication skills seems to be the most important to me.

A lot is talked about having empathy and generally agreeable as a person. Being that as a leader can make you burn out. I don't understand why we don't talk more about compassion instead, which has a good word in Finnish, my?t?tunto. Compassion is better than empathy, because it's the difference of wanting to help vs. feeling others feelings. At the same time, I understand that people say one thing and mean another, it's not supposed to be that exact and scientific.

It's also said that being a leader means you should be present. Well yes, you are more visible. At the same time, you are also more alone, from the role you have and tasks you have. If you are a social person and wants to be around people all the time, you will only do one part of leadership well. This is something that can shock people when they are in the task as a leader.

Also, if you are high in agreeableness, you will have a hard time with the more serious part of leadership. Which is evaluating people, making decisions, giving feedback, etc. These things are not for the most soft-hearted person, at the same time, the literature tells that this is what we want. There's some discrepancy here.

Management and leadership literature tends to focus on situations where the company is striving, is in a peace state where you can focus on things like how people can feel the best in life and make the workplace safer.

What's not in almost any books, is how to lead a company in times of danger, stress and wartime. Is the company in crisis, then a quite different kind of leadership is needed. And companies are not only in peace all the time. For example, start-ups are often on the brink on hit or miss, most don't make it, you can't live in an illusion of peace time then.

Being in wartime doesn't have to mean you are really stressed all the time, it's just a different situation than peacetime. From the book "the hard thing about hard things", I learned that most people can't manage both situations, you are either a peace time or a wartime leader.

Lastly, I want to repeat the idea of someone else evaluating you as a leader based on one instance. If you function as a leader in one situation and it goes bad, that doesn't mean you are not a good leader and can never be.

You can't learn to become a leader by attending classes, and you are not born as a leader. You learn leadership by doing, and many factors contribute to whether you succeed right away or not. It might be your current ability, and it might also be your employer who doesn't help you succeed.

?

?

?

?