Reflections on Leadership

For several months now, I’ve been thrust into situations where the subject of leadership has come up. No longer in government, and engaged in work-from-home freelance tasks, I’m no longer in a traditional leadership environment, but as I reflect on those times when I was, I’m now able to see more clearly the ‘why’ of many of the leadership decision I made. 

As I wrote in my book on leadership, Things I Learned from My Grandmother About Leadership and Life,  being a leader is all about putting other people and things ahead of yourself. It doesn’t require being in a formal position, or having direct control over others to be considered a leader. Put more simply, a leader is someone that other people follow. As Colin Powell once said, “a leader is someone that people follow out of curiosity,’ not because they feel they have to, but because they want to see where that leader is going, and they want to go along for the ride. 

Leadership is also not about bossing other people around. I got a message from a person who worked for me over thirty years ago that touched me to the core because it reminded me what real leadership is all about.

 

“I need to mention this before we both get senile dementia and neither one of us can remember the event. Which may be difficult even now... You came down to the ACS Unit, which I was managing, one afternoon, sometime probably in 1998, to see how things were going. I was dealing with the proverbial “difficult customer”. Short version: You stepped up to the window, and said something like (not an actual quote): “I am the Consul General here, and I’m responsible for all of the actions of the officers at this Consulate…” And, by that action, you saved me the whole time for the conversation, “I want to speak with your supervisor, I want to speak with the Consul General…etc.” “Well…you just did.” Obviously, there’s a larger lesson here. I’m just recounting the “micro experience”…ha-ha.”

 

There is, as he wrote, a larger lesson there. That lesson is, a leader puts people first, because without the people behind you, you are not a leader. There’s also more here than just the larger lesson of ‘putting your people first and taking care of them.’ There’s the lesson of taking responsibility for all that your organization does or fails to do. My grandmother taught me that in the form, of ‘if you have the job, you have the responsibility and you can’t dodge it.’ The army also taught me as a young lieutenant that the leader is where the buck stops—period. The other lesson is to make sure your people know that you value them and what they do. 

As I look back on this and other incidents, I remember that this wasn’t something I had a script or instructions to do. It just felt like the right thing to do. 

And that is the most important lesson in leadership and the thing that distinguishes it from management. Managers do things right, but leaders do the right things.