Why Do You Want To Be A Leader?

As a leader, which do you consider more important: The wellbeing of your people, or the effective achievement of company objectives? Obviously you need both to be successful in the long term but what is the right balance?

As many of you are aware, I have been conducting a five minutes leadership survey for the past two months as part of my book project. In fact, 440 of you have participated in the survey so far and shared your perspectives.

The purpose of the survey is to better understand the challenges facing aspiring leaders and their perspectives about leadership so that the book can be more relevant to their needs. More specifically, I would like to use the survey to validate or some of my hypotheses about personal leadership development. At the same time, I am hoping the insights and feedbacks from the survey can provoke discussions and provide unbiased data to guide both individuals and organization to make decisions. The survey will not end with the book. Instead, I am hoping aspiring leaders will continue taking the survey as a result of the book so that the learning process can continue.

The survey focuses on the following aspect of leadership:

• Why do you want to be a leader?
• What defines leadership?
• What are key role for leaders?
• What makes great leaders?
• What are the biggest organizational barriers for aspiring leaders?
• What are the key success factors for aspiring leaders?
• What are the deadly sins for aspiring leaders?
• What are the most effective options for the development of aspiring leaders?

Here I will share some thoughts about the survey results for the very first question. The survey asked the following two questions:

• Has anyone in your organization ever asked you why you want to be a leader? (Yes/No)
• Have you ever asked yourself why you want to be a leader? (Yes/No)

While over eighty two percent of respondents stated that they had asked themselves the question about why they wanted to be leaders, only thirty-nine percent of the responses stated that their organizations ever asked the same question. That is a stunning 43% gap!

The survey results is consistent with my hypothesis that organizations do not spend enough time and effort in understanding what motivates their aspiring leaders. Organizations often either assume people are motivated by the same drivers such as shareholder values or personal career advancement. The reality is everyone is different and the leadership value and priorities behind each individual aspiring leader are different.

As a result, leadership programs are often driven by organization objectives which may or may not always resonate with individual leadership values. In addition, such programs tend to focus on leadership skills rather than what truly inspire people in order to lift teams or organizations to higher performance levels.

A more people-oriented workplace is likely going to benefit from new and inspired ideas from people whose experiences are different to the traditional decision makers in an organization and have a more inclusive working environment. On the other hand, an organization focused culture with a strong focus on results can sometimes come at the expense of personal considerations. When people feel left behind, their allegiance to the organization will suffer.

Divergence of the two different types of organization culture becomes even more apparent during time of crises such as the current pandemic. This dynamic is likely a key contributing factor to the current mass resignation. Furthermore, the ongoing active discussion about the future of work may become an inflection point on how companies balance organization focused culture vs people oriented culture.

Back to the survey questions, until organizations figure out effective way to close that 43% gap, it is very unlikely they can have effective leadership development programs.

Please continue the discussion by sharing your thoughts on “why do you want to be a leader”, and take the five minutes leadership survey.

Leadership Book Update:

I have officially submitted a very rough draft of book manuscript with about 42000 words to New Degree Press for review. As I mentioned last week, the current working title is:?The Odyssey of Self-Discovery: On Becoming A Leader.

As part of the publishing process, I will start a pre-sale campaign for the book starting late July. Stay tuned for details. Meanwhile, I am currently working with a video production team for a trailer video to support the presale campaign. I look forward your continued interests and support!

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