Followers lead

Leadership is one of those things that we all think we understand, but life and experience teach us there's so much more to learn.

I've written on the topic before, and my thoughts continue to crystallize the more experience I get as both a leader and a follower.

What so many of us miss is the importance of inspiring and encouraging instead of cajoling and coercing.

Or even—and this is a hard one to get—keeping ourselves from suggesting.

It's not our job to get someone on the right path, to move them in a direction we see them needing to go. Often, we do this in the guise of challenging, supporting, or even demanding.

Nobody wants this.

People want help finding their dreams, help pushing forward on their passions, help doing more of the things that they're already doing or would hope to do—not changing them to fit a specific direction that we see for them.

People want cheerleaders to come alongside, dream with them, and be the Yoda to their Skywalker. They do not want us as the superhero of their story; that's for them. They want us to get them and support them.

Instead of imagining ourselves as omniscient and looking for how we can improve those around us, we have an opportunity to take a different tack. We can choose to look for what a person is, in our opinion, missing and challenge them to improve on that thing because we see a need for it—or we could go a different way.

Better than you found them

This concept of leadership applies in life and work alike. It's easy to think that a good manager is one who gets the whole team rowing in the right direction. But a team isn't a ship, and we're not all pulling oars.

When I've led teams, I've looked for the widest overlap between what the team needs to accomplish and what the individuals within it are good at doing, as well as where their inspiration and intrinsic motivation lie.

It doesn't always match up one-for-one, but there's overlap more often than you'd think. And when you take the time to look, to wrestle through the pieces all laid out on a board, to see where people can fit—sometimes magic might happen.

Years ago I was leading a small team with a large project and tight deadlines. I brought on another designer to help move things along. After the first few days the client pulled me aside and let me know that they wouldn't cut it—they weren't up to par with what I'd been offering on my own.

I asked for a little time, believing the designer was more than capable. With encouragement, finding where they were doing well and focusing on that, and then shoring up the areas they struggled in—well they flourished.

Several months later the client jokingly called out that they were doing a better job than me. I couldn't have been prouder. I believed in the designer, believed they could do it, and they did; they absolutely nailed it.

Also, I didn't force them to fit in the mold of how I expected things, instead I found what they did well and supported it, encouraged it, walked alongside them until they were doing the job as well as me.

Along came Jony

This reminds me of Jony Ive working at Apple in the days before Steve Jobs returned. He was trying his best: a talented person pushing where he could, but essentially residing in a basement, rotting away, his abilities unrecognized and unappreciated.

At first, Steve thought he should be fired like many others as he was trying to right the ship at Apple. But then he saw something special in this young designer from Britain. Steve was able to match his own editorial skills to Jony's creativity, and history was made.

It wasn't that Steve was magical in making Jony into something special, but rather that he supported the special and curated it in the best way possible.

I want to look for more opportunities like that in life and work, to be the helper unlocking the greatness that so many have.

Being a cheerleader

Outward motivation from us to another does not work.

If anything, it burns people out. It takes the self-motivation they may already feel and overrides it with the direction we believe they should take.

And if our will is strong enough, we'll force them to follow our requirements and dreams instead of letting them feel the inward pull toward driving forward with their own motivations.

So many leaders miss this.

And we want others to feel that inward passion, that drive, that feeling of being absolutely amazing at what they're doing.

Very few understand the delicate balance between support and taking over, and we think that hard knocks, hard love, candid speech, and a million other euphemisms for taking over will inspire others to get it.

This leadership style does the opposite of what's intended, especially with people who are heavily driven on their own, who push themselves the hardest. The person you want on your team is one who will take ownership and look for creative ways to solve problems. You don't want your brain to override theirs; you want the two working in collaboration.

Now, that's not to say there isn't room for encouragement, support, and editorial input.

Those are all helpful.

Even when you see someone who is wrong on a topic, even when they're doing harm with their beliefs, there's still a way to come alongside them in steelmanning (where possible), to help them see with their own mind how things could be shifted.

It's good writing

Kristin Katherine Rush is a well known author who teaches people how to write fiction. Years ago I listened to a podcast from her, and in it she mentioned that she only encourages.

It's not her job to make people into great writers. It's not her job to tear down and build back up in her own image.

She's interested in none of that.

Instead she looks for what's working and supports it, uplifts it, calls it out in the person in a way they might not have seen—she's far more interested in the writer being a writer years from that point, than in setting them right from the start.

It's your race

I have a friend who recently completed a half marathon. And she did it of her own accord, through her own will, matching her own hopes and dreams. She's amazing, and it was all her. I'm not giving false platitudes here; she put in the work and did what she set out to do.

Did I help? Barely. I talked about the idea a little and shared my excitement. It was already in her head, and my own delight in the topic of running was one piece of the puzzle she was weighing in choosing whether to make the race happen.

If I had an inflated sense of self, of my leadership style, I could miss what happened: she did something amazing, and as a friend, I got to see her delight in overcoming a challenging task.

She put in the six months of effort to make it a reality.

She is entirely responsible for the results.

Too many see themselves as responsible for the success of others. And it diminishes the beauty of what people are capable of accomplishing, it attempts to solicit credit where none is due.

Giving others the credit

I've had numerous friends develop a love for reading (something I greatly support) after we met.

I did not make them readers.

I may have suggested books. I may have suggested fictional stories. I may have shared my excitement about novels and my joy of diving into written worlds—and hoped that they'd find their own inspiration to love reading—but I didn't do anything to get them over the slump they felt.

They did.

I will not take ownership of a person accomplishing something that they wanted—even if I offered encouragement and ideas for how to get there. If I did, if I thought it was me, I'd have a false way of understanding how people work and how motivations work.

I've seen people come together to work on a massive project, and the leader mistakenly thinks that it was the culmination of their magical abilities to pull it all together.

The funny thing is, they did have a hand in it as the leader.

In fact, if they did their job right, they did lead. They did inspire, support, and do a mountain of work to help ensure the effort got accomplished. But the others showed up because of their own motivations, hopes, dreams, and desires.

The role of leadership

So where does leadership fit in?

Leadership is knowing in your heart that the people you're serving and helping will succeed because they have it in them—and your role might just be to provide the right encouragement at the right time and remove the roadblocks.

They need their gifts unlocked, to know they have them in the first place, and to find the joy in using them.

You're not the great person who made them succeed.

They are the great person who might just need to know what's possible.

And here's the cool part: the acceleration from your support and care may help them do what they wouldn't have done on their own.

You'll find few joys in life so sweet as seeing the lights come on in someone else's eyes.

That's what being a leader means. And so many miss this. I've missed it on many occasions; I'm trying to do less of that.

The cost of coercion

So many people think that great leadership comes from ensuring the leader's vision is carried out.

Whether through attempted kindness, cajoling, coercion—it doesn't really matter—at the end of the day they are requiring others to follow their direction because they believe it's important.

Now, the weird caveat here is that sometimes the leader may be right about an idea, a direction. And sometimes they can force a person to do what they need, to bend to their will, not out of that person's own desires, but because they may feel they have no other choice.

And the desired outcome may occur as a result. That person might change, do the thing, get the task done.

But the leader is never right in the manner in which this happened.

They've taken a moment where someone else might have let their light shine—and snuffed it out with their own imagined brilliance. Yes, the work got done, but at what cost?

They will burn out the people who follow them. They will hurt those they think they're serving.

Each of us has our dreams, our own things we wish to accomplish.

This is obvious to state, but I'll say it anyway: one of us isn't any better at being human than another.

In terms of skill set and ability, sure. Some can accomplish far more than others.

But in terms of human possibility and unlocked curiosity, the world would be a far more exciting place if we allowed others to stretch their own wings a little bit more. Yes, that might mean more mistakes and friction. It's harder that way, but far more rewarding.

Unlocking ability

Each of us has an innate desire to do something amazing.

It might be shut down, locked away, starved and unnoticed from a lifetime of being beaten down, but it's there.

Being a leader means listening to, searching for, and helping to uncover that ability that exists in us. And when it is uncovered, when the magic of that person blossoming happens—yes, as a result of your support and help—it means knowing that that person deserves the accolades and the credit, not you as the leader.

Some leaders will claim false modesty.

They will attempt to hide the fact that, at the end of the day, they believe themselves responsible and deserve the credit. You can always tell. I've been guilty of this on more than one occasion.

On the other hand, you can tell which leaders believe that they are the value and which believe that the people they support are the value.

Now, some people will feel differently from one day to the next. We're not all perfect supporters of others. We're human, after all.

I've been both types of leader, I must confess, but I'm striving to be more of the one than the other. I'm striving to uncover, in the people I care for, their ability to be the most amazing they can be.

Finding the ready

Now, with all that said, not everyone is ready right now to go in the direction that meets their highest potential. Recognize that and work with people who are ready.

I've shared my love of reading with friends in ways that have encouraged them to develop a love of their own.

And I'm incredibly excited about that. I find great joy in hearing the books they've gone through. But it's them who do it.

Would they have done it without me?

They absolutely had the ability, as proven by the fact that they did it. I may have accelerated it, and I may have encouraged them. But it's not my job to take the credit.

It's their job alone. It's for them alone to appreciate what they did.

That's how leadership works.