The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Kevin Kruse, Forbes writer and CEO of LEADx, has written about a few leadership themes he’s discovered when interviewing highly successful leaders. While you’ve probably heard all of these themes at some point, what follows is a quick take on two of them because, as contrasting leadership themes, they offer a great deal of wisdom when considered together.
Here’s what we mean.
1. One theme (and hard truth) that Kevin points to is that great leaders can be “likable, but not liked” because leadership and friendship are not the same thing. A leader must err on the side of honesty on all topics for which the leader is responsible to provide direction. Specifically, a lack of direct, constructive feedback can create frustrated or even dysfunctional teams, so great leaders reflect reality as they see it even if it’s unflattering for recipients to hear.
Along the same vein, leaders who need to be liked will seek unnecessary consensus. Great leaders make tough and timely decisions because it’s their job to make these decisions – with input, certainly, but commonly without consensus – even if that frustrates their teams.
As Kruse states, great leaders must replace their need to be liked with a need to lead right in order to advance their organizations as a whole.
2. A second leadership theme Kruse emphasizes is one that provides contrast to the previous point. In short, Kruse writes, “Great leaders lead with love.”
How does this integrate with the first theme? Here Kruse quotes basketball coach John Wooden when he advised his team: “I will not like you all the same, but I will love you all the same.”
Ultimately, this has to do with being a caring individual who finds ways to show it, creating a trust-based and highly engaged culture despite unavoidable moments of hard feedback or the realization by team-members that their opinions weren’t prioritized.
This can include simple acts of consideration or anything that shows respect and concern for team-members, beginning with the common courtesy of actually getting to know the team.
Putting these two leadership themes together produces great leaders who balance:
- encouragement with critique, and
- decisiveness with concern.
In summary, balancing these contrasting themes can make a good leader into a great leader, creating clarity, a sense of common direction, and engaged teams that produce more both individually and collectively.