Being the Leader You Want to Be
Leadership. Companies rise by its success, languish by its mediocrity and fall by its failures. Being a good leader requires many different and hard-to-foster traits: intelligence, empathy, creativity, consistency, foresight, patience and more. Without knowing how you want to lead, however, many of these critical traits will be difficult to achieve. (How can you be consistent without knowing your own rules? How can you motivate without knowing what drives you?) Therefore, the first goal of any leader should be to define how you want to lead.
After deciding “the how,” there of course remains the task of following through with those decisions—making conscious changes to your personality, learning your limits, and trusting others. It’s a long and daunting list, but with a little soul-searching and dedication, it’s one that can absolutely be achieved.
WHAT MATTERS TO YOU
The first step to defining yourself as a business leader is determining what matters to you. The question can be simplified into two smaller ones: What matters to you right now, and what’s going to matter to you forever? Dividing it like this is mostly a way of reaching an answer more easily, but it also illustrates an important point: Part of who you are as a leader should always be in flux.
Gregg Emmer, chief marketing officer, vice president of Batavia, Ohio-based Kaeser & Blair Inc., explained. “Each situation a person finds themselves in will dictate the importance of leadership skills and what is important in that specific situation,” he said. “If the area of focus is business, then sales performance and the ability to help others improve is very important. If it is problem resolution, than empathy certainly will be higher on the list.”
The flexibility Emmer describes simplifies the issue of being the leader you want to be because in some ways, the answer is always going to be “I am the leader my company needs today.” If one day it’s a drill sergeant, you’re that. Tomorrow, it could be motivational coach, mediator or strategist. So to some degree, deciding what matters to you as a leader is less important than determining the immediate needs of your company, and how you can fulfill them day-to-day.
WHO ARE YOU, PERMANENTLY?
Answering the second and more permanent question of “What’s going to matter to you forever,” is a bit more difficult. After all, there are so many options to choose from, some of which are in direct conflict with others (equality vs. meritocracy, honesty and openness vs. control and simplicity, etc.). If you’re struggling, there are a couple strategies that can help you narrow it down.
First, if you have the option, study those who have come before you at your company. Emmer mentioned that three ideals he holds critical to any successful leader—honesty, integrity and reliability—were in place at Kaeser & Blair long before he joined the company. Finding that kind of ideological lineup in your own company can be critical, not only for answering your own personal question of what kind of leader you want to be, but also to make sure that you don’t contradict company culture. (If you believe in openness, avoid companies that prefer being tight-lipped, etc.)
The second option is more complicated, but also perhaps the most valuable: Understand who you are, and align your core leadership values with that. If you’re honest, lead through honesty; if you’re friendly, lead through friendliness; if you’re a rationalist, lead through rationality. Picking out personality traits that you already have as cornerstones of your leadership style is a way to utilize your strengths and plant your leadership style on solid, sturdy ground.
Keep in mind as well that your leadership values don’t have to be ethical in nature. Punctuality, fun, politeness—there are a number of less morally charged values available to base your leadership style around. Take Brandon Mackay, MAS, CEO and president of Salt Lake City-headquartered SnugZ USA, who bases part of his leadership philosophy on what excites him. “The only thing that is important to me is what gets me excited,” he said. “I’m absolutely addicted to creating new opportunities for SnugZ USA and vetting out those ideas with the best team in the business.”
BECOMING YOUR IDEAL
Knowing the leader you want to be and being that leader are two separate things. Depending on how far your leadership ideal is from your current personality, it may seem intimidating and potentially impossible for you to reach your goals. But, remember that many before you have changed themselves into the leader they want to be, some of them being the most successful leaders in our industry.
“I started Proforma six months after graduating from college, so I had no meaningful exposure to business leaders,” said Greg Muzzillo, founder of Cleveland-based Proforma. “Worse, growing up I was raised in a primarily negative and controlling environment at home and at school. In my early years, I was primarily negative and controlling because it’s all I knew,” he explained. “As Proforma grew I developed a more hands-off style due to the many demands of a rapidly growing company. Today I am a combination of command and control, hands-off, and encouraging coach,” he said.
WORK AROUND YOUR LIMITS
It’s possible that you may strike on a part of your personality you’d like to change, but for whatever reason, it’s impossible. Maybe you’re deeply stubborn, maybe you’re too forgiving, maybe you hate waking up early in the morning. Whatever it is, occasionally, the things we hate about ourselves cannot be eliminated, only minimized to a degree. If a personality trait you’d like to go away can’t be completely erased, there are ways to work around it.
“I often read biographies about successful professionals, or observe their styles, and identify traits that I would like to incorporate into my management style,” said Ross Silverstein, president and CEO of Wayland, Massachusetts-based iPROMOTEu. “Sometimes I can do this; in other instances though, I cannot, because there is only so much tweaking I can do to my personality and style,” he explained. “I try to focus on the big picture and always ask myself, ‘How can I move the company forward today?’”
By focusing on the larger issue of “How can I move the company forward today,” rather than the smaller problem of “Why am I so stubborn/bad at waking up in the morning,” you may discover your stubbornness is not the roadblock you thought it was, or you may find a solution without changing yourself.
STAYING ON COURSE
The final part of the equation requires self-evaluation—not only of whether you’re staying true to your desired style, but also whether that style is working.
This can be difficult for many reasons. Often, there is no one to answer to but yourself, and if you falter on who you want to be, there is no one to call you on it. If your principles aren’t working, there is no one watching for their success but you. We lie to ourselves. We rationalize, we bargain, we break self-imposed deadlines, and sometimes, we completely miss the big picture.
So, what to do? Relying on facts is one option. Muzzillo explained that he looks to the success of his company as a measure of whether he’s succeeding as a leader or not. “I believe my success as a leader will eventually be measured by the organization I build and the ability of its people to sustainably produce value for our owners and their customers,” he said, noting that a great career environment for employees and an equitable bottom line were other company success-based measures of leadership.
Silverstein agreed that a company’s success is a useful measure of its leader. “First, and most important, I evaluate my success by the company’s financial performance,” he said. “Is the company profitable and are the company’s sales and profits growing meaningfully? Second, are the company’s customers and employees happy? While the contentment of the company’s constituencies is very important, and is a measure of a leader’s interpersonal skills, it is meaningless if the company is failing financially,” he explained. “First and foremost, a company must be profitable and growing. Everything else is a distant second.”
Besides financial success, are those you lead still following you as passionately as before? “Since leaders are granted their leadership position by those who choose to follow, it is those same people that will provide the feedback and evaluation of my leadership,” said Emmer. “Self-evaluation for me is simply like holding up a mirror to see that people are still willing to follow me, and that I am not leading by too much of a distance that I don’t hear their concerns and suggestions.”