“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” – Benjamin Disraeli
Over the past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about being a father, husband and what it means to lead my family. Leadership has always been something that has greatly intrigued me. The ideas of being an influencer rather than one who is always influenced and making a positive impact in someone’s life… these are incredible and challenging thoughts.
In thinking of the leaders I look up to, dead and alive, a simple thought came to mind: great leaders are easy to follow. I know, profound right? But, before you go back to checking your Facebook, think about this. Great leaders are easy to follow because deep down we believe they are someone worth following, someone who has overflowing value that can greatly benefit our lives if we are close enough to them. So ask yourself, are you someone worth following? As you mull this over consider the following:
Do you ask others to do more than you are willing to do yourself? – Going through four years at a military academy gave me an opportunity to witness the best and worst of leadership. One of the strongest lessons I took away from that experience came about while doing some push ups.
Part of being at a military academy is being trained by upperclassmen as a freshman which often meant being stopped in the hallways and told to do push ups. While no one actually enjoyed this experience, it was at least tolerable if the one doing the training was someone you respected and knew could do just as many push ups as you and more.
The worst in leadership came about when being forced to do push ups by someone you knew couldn’t knock out 25 if their life depended on it. Doing push ups for these people was a miserable experience and put an incredibly sour taste in my mouth. This person wasn’t a leader, they were an order-giver — too weak to do anything on their own, but expecting their subordinates to do something they couldn’t do themselves. I had no respect for these upperclassmen and wouldn’t follow them anywhere.
Are you serving yourself and calling it service for others? – My friend Glenn posed this question a few days ago and it has haunted me. Is the purpose of your leadership fulfilling a calling, a need for a sense of purpose, or is it actually about serving those following you? When looking at the great leaders in my life one factor is common among them all, they authentically want to see their followers succeed and will do anything they can to make that happen. Leadership to them is about others, not themselves.
In the military, as I’m sure is true in corporate America, performance reviews often require short bullet statements explaining what the person being reviewed has done to positively impact the organization. Around review time it is often an interesting phenomena to watch as many people suddenly begin volunteering for various things as they realize they don’t have very many bullet statements. Sometimes our leadership can turn into a race to acquire good bullet statements if we aren’t careful. What’s the end goal of your leadership, self-fulfillment or the betterment of others?
These are the questions that keep a father, husband and young military officer up at night. There are lots of people in the world with titles and power, but few true leaders. The reality is, none of us probably think we’re really worth following, but we work at it and try to do better each day…and the process is good.
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I couldn’t agree more with you Cameron.
I always say: “A leader is a person who makes others successful. “
Frank
Thanks Frank,
Your quote is very accurate, if we can’t help others live better lives our leadership is quite weak. Checked out your blog – very good leadership content!
Cameron
cameron….great thoughts. you have a gift for saying the profound in a straightforward way. becoming someone worth following is much harder than simply getting a following. your thoughts are very helpful in helping me do the hard work of bcoming that kind of leader.
I love the line about “father, husband and young military officer…” because these familial, relationship and professional roles are ones each one of us has to play at some point in our lives.
When I was considering going to law school I read a great book called Law School Confidential. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t promotional, but there was a great chapter about ownership in it that I’ll never forget. The authors mentioned that no matter where you go or what you do, think of the situation as yours, think of that company as you own it, the people as relying on you. That mental shift alone makes you work harder and with more of a community sense. I thought it was brilliant and has made me lead better. The corollary I use now is house vs. apartment, but it gets the point across.
Great post!
I checked my feed and it seems alright, but lately I’ve been playing around with the html to activate things…and I don’t know html. So this could be a big problem. I’ll keep a check on it. Thanks for letting me know! Btw, I’ve got you on the list too!
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