Leadership and Success

Commentary:  I got to thinking recently about leadership and what is leadership really about.  Leadership is many things to many people and nothing without anyone. Leadership in any case is about results and not all results mean success.  In this post, I want to capture some thoughts about leadership and success. I rarely see discussions that couple these two notions.

Success

In general success is thought of as making things better. Further defining success can be a challenge if one has not determined what  needs improved or made better and how that result looks in the end. Improvements arrive by making changes that carry to an endstate. Stephen Covey's second habit of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People tells us to begin with the end in mind (Covey, 1989).  Vision is seeing the endstate in the minds eye and strategy is the roadmap to get there.  Since vision comes from deep within the mind then success must also come from within ourselves. Our mind is our essence, our soul, our spirit.

Theodore Roosevelt quipped, "All the resources we need are in the mind" (Misner and Morgan, 2004, p 1).

The natural human tendency is to pursue success which is important to the human psyche. More pressing a concern, humans are temporally bound as the resource of time is constrained for everyone. Humans are driven to make the most of time. Meaningful success arrives because of deliberate efforts utilizing natural talents and virtuous passions that are consistent with ethical and moral conduct. The measure of success is not comparative with another's success because the objectives are different. For example, a rich man achieving a 15% increase in wealth compared to an impoverished man increasing his wealth by 15% will show nominal dollar magnitudes relative to each's position. The productive gain for the impoverished man is much greater than the gain for the rich man but dollars numbers may show the opposite. The measure of success is how well you use your productive time to achieve the goals important to you (Misner and Morgan, 2004, pp 2-3).

Many people may struggle pursuing hollow successes only to find the journey has left them empty and miserable. One important test or measure for success is humility. The modest achiever navigates the rocky road to realize the glorious and rewarding trip the adventure had been. That journey may not be the pursuit of prestige but instead the joy of victory every day for the smallest of things. While there is no formula for success, success involves the uncommon application of common knowledge (Misner and Morgan, 2004, p 4). 

Leadership

General Norman Schwarzkopf defined leadership as the ability to encourage people to willingly perform more than they would ordinarily perform themselves (Misner and Morgan, 2004, p 214). This is one of many  definitions of leadership that is somewhat narrow and focuses on motivation and possibly charisma as military action is to press the limits and carry the fight as far as possible. Missing from Schwarzkopf's defintion are the character qualities typically associated with a leader such as vision, strategy, standards, and presence at a minimum. Perhaps they are implied but still not apparent. 

An improved version of Schwarzkopf's definition is the  capacity to formulate vision, a strategy to achieve that vision, then charismatically motivate people to willfully perform the tasks in an extraordinary manner that realizes the vision. While that sounds complicated a shortened version may be the capacity to motivate others to success through extraordinary efforts by putting vision then strategy to task.

The overarching key themes in the definition are success and change. Success has been discussed on a individual level. The two foundational points are:

1. The measure of success is how well productive time is used to achieve the goals important to you.
2. The uncommon application of common knowledge.

Change is tabboo or unwelcomed to most people. Leadership is initiating and managing change by creating goals or the desire to co-opt goals on an individual level in order to effect a vision. The leaders goals become personal goals of the followers. Thus, people want to put the strategy-to-task because they have a stake in the outcome.   When people have a stake in the outcome then success becomes everyones. The individual who architects the vision, strategy and motivates people to success is a leader. Leadership does not stop at the vision or motivating people. Leadership is present top-to-bottom as the leader must be a leader of leaders.

Success and Leadership

One of the pinnacle signatures of a strong leader is humility in the face of success. A strong leader does not take success for granted and attributes the success not to himself. Instead, these leaders often attribute successes to their creator and human contributors who facilitate success.  Success for the leader comes with immense effort, diligence, persistence, and most of all humility.

Some interesting instruments available to leaders reaching for success include Effects Based Outcomes, EBO, and the Democratic Reform Process, DRP, model. Also leaders must make more of the right decisions than bad decisions. Therefore, decision making is critical to leadership.  I will discuss these in upcoming posts.

Comment: These are a few other posts I have made disscussing leadership.

Success is Not an Entitlement

Tattoo on Your Soul

Aliens Cause Global Warming

References:
Covey, S. (1989). Seven habits of highly effective people. Free press.

Misner, I and Morgan, D. (2004). Masters of success: proven techniques for achieving success in businessand life.  Canada.