Leadership

“There is nothing exalted about being an effective executive.
It is simply doing one’s job like thousands of others.”

~ Peter F. Drucker

Over the past 50 years, the volume of books, journals, reports, magazines, internet articles, studies, and other literature on leadership has grown significantly. Each one offers important insights, theories, and lessons about leadership. Much of the literature consists of authors presenting research and analysis regarding the skills, competencies, characteristics, behaviors, and traits of successful leaders. The conclusions drawn from the research serve to advance our understanding of leadership as an art and science. This chapter explores prevalent leadership themes stemming from the growing body of literature, including the leader’s role, a review of the differences between managers and leaders, and a discussion of whether leaders are born or made.

The Leader Role

Leaders come from diverse backgrounds, they serve in all fields, and they hold a wide variety of titles. Their personalities and leadership styles are equally diverse. Despite these differences, however, their role and function in an organization is the same. Whether a leader works in the manufacturing industry or law enforcement, health care or government, university or military, a leader is responsible, first of all, for influencing others to get things done—“the right things,” contends Peter F. Drucker.”

Effective leaders, therefore, make decisions, communicate, and act in ways to motivate, influence, and inspire team members to accomplish the correct job(s), task(s), and mission(s) in pursuit of an organization’s goals, objectives, priorities, and long-term vision. Drucker expresses his view on effective leadership: The foundation of effective leadership is thinking through the organization’s mission, defining it and establishing it, clearly and visibly. The leader sets the goals, sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the standards. He makes compromises, of course; indeed, effective leaders are painfully aware that they are not in control of the universe. But before accepting a compromise, the effective leader has thought through what is right and desirable. The leader’s first task is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound. 

The second requirement is that the leader sees leadership as responsibility rather than as rank and privilege. When things go wrong—and they always do—they do not blame others. Winston Churchill is an example of leadership through clearly defining a mission and goals. General George Marshall, America’s chief of staff in World War II, is an example of leadership through responsibility. Harry Truman’s folksy ‘the buck stops here’ is still as good a definition as any. But precisely because an effective leader knows that he, and no one else, is ultimately responsible, he is not afraid of strength in associates and subordinates. An effective leader wants strong associates; he encourages them, pushes them, and indeed champions them. Because he holds himself ultimately responsible for the mistakes of his associates and subordinates, he also sees the triumphs of his associates and subordinates as his triumphs rather than as threats.

A leader may be personally vain—as General MacArthur was to an almost pathological degree. Or he may be personally humble—both Lincoln and Truman were almost to the point of having inferiority complexes. But all three wanted able, independent, self-assured people around them; they encouraged their associates and subordinates, praising and promoting them. An effective leader knows, of course, that there is a risk: able people tend to be ambitious. But he realizes that it is a much smaller risk than to be served by mediocrity. He also knows that the gravest indictment of a leader is for the organization to collapse as soon as he leaves or dies, as happened in Russia the moment Stalin died and as happens all too often in companies. An effective leader knows that the ultimate task of leadership is to create human energies and human vision. 

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”

~ William H. Gates III

Source: Dr. Philip A. Iannuzzi, Jr. (Retired Colonel, U.S. Air Force)