Why Gandhi Would Have Crushed it in Management.

The first person you lead is yourself. 

Becoming a complete Leader

“We must travel on the inside before we can travel on the outside, because the journey of growth and success is first an internal one." ~ John Maxwell

In leadership there are generally 3 kinds:

1. Pragmatic Leaders
2. Idealistic Leaders
3. Pragmatic Idealists Leaders

Pragmatic leaders tend to focus on the logical side of leadership. They are overly focus on how we get things done or how we do things. Although incredibly valuable at times, this can lead to a reflexive pattern of "poking holes in any new idea" and communicated as negativity. Additionally, it can cause a lack of ingenuity because " this is how we do things" is a very logical response. Any new idea also creates a great deal of uncertainty; and uncertainty is very uncomfortable for humans. When fear kicks in, logic takes over.

Idealist leaders focus on the Big Vision or the greater picture. Idealist talk in terms of the way the world should be. Idealists know what needs to be done and why we need to get there; but they absolutely suck at process or road-mapping how we get there. This comes off as naive and will be met with much resistance from your pragmatic employees and teammates. Idealists see the end goal and they have a strong belief that we can get there, however they have a very hard time distilling ethereal concepts into a step by step process.

Pragmatic Idealist Leaders are at the pinnacle of leadership. In other words they are a practical visionary. To be a great a leader you actually need both Logic and Vision.

Where do you stack up?

1. Low Idealist, Low pragmatic - Not ready for leadership
2. High Idealist, Low Pragmatic (Charismatic, Excellent communicator, Innovator, Motivator). This person is excellent at feedback, but a terrible coach. A crude example would be telling someone to Run Faster, and then expecting them to magically run faster. As a leader, you are taking all ownership off of you and placing all the ownership on the employee or the team. Idealists tend to lack a sense of reality, and come off as a complainer when things are not as ideal as they could be.
3. Low Idealist, High pragmatic (spreadsheets, process documentation, planner, highly organized). Great at explaining how we get there, but struggle to explain why we do it this way and how these processes tie into the bigger goal. This person is very good at process, but struggles to connect the dots for employees on why they should follow a certain process, they tend to come off as a perfectionist and make their employees feel like their expectations are unrealistic. Pragmatics tend to lack ingenuity because they accept the world as it is and they are not very motivating.
4. High Idealist, High Pragmatic (Charismatic, Excellent communicator, Innovator, Motivator + spreadsheets, process documentation, planner, highly organized). This type of leader is great at communicating the vision and executing on how we get there.

The term Practical Idealism was first presented by John Dewey in 1917 and was adopted by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's view of the world was grounded in an ethical imperative to implement ideals of virtue or good. In other words, Gandhi placed emphasis on the alignment of what is ideal with what is possible given our current situation.

In my 11+ years in business and leadership here is what I have come to know as a practical idealist:

• My value as a leader is not my charisma, it’s not my ability to motivate people, its not my ability to create processes or execute processes, and it’s not even my ability to source talent. My value as a leader is in my system.
• My value as a leader is my ability to replicate myself and the plays that my team runs, over and over and over again. My value is based purely on my ability to create consistent execution towards a goal. 
• The divide in leadership and teams is 100% determined by the lens through which a leader views the world.
• Too much idealism and you turn into a micro-manager, because you have no idea how to create a system that allows people to perform at a higher level. Which means without hand holding your team, they can't execute. Not only is this annoying, but it is not sustainable as a leader. This style of leadership will leave you and your team frustrated and burnout and will erode the ecosystem of trust.
• Too much pragmatism and you turn into a perfectionist and a demotivating leader, which leaves you and your team frustrated and burnout.

If you are a leader reading this, I challenge you to take a hard look at your self and re-balance.

If you are a leader of leaders, I challenge you to categorize your leaders into the 4 buckets and either coach those leaders up, or coach them out.

In Strength,

Samson Jagoras