Leadership: What Comes First?

Which comes first? The leader or the follower? And does the prospective leader’s approach affect his or her success?

Leadership Begins with a Common Goal and Hope

Leaders create hope that the common goal can be achieved

Whenever a group of people have a common goal, one or more leaders will emerge from the pack. As Napoleon said, a leader is someone who is a dealer in hope. It may be hope for more money, a better life, the end of an injustice - or even hope for revenge. Yet the leader must do more than simply offer hope. The leader must present a deal which rings true to the potential followers. It must be a deal that inspires the followers to take actions the leader wants done because the followers believe they will realize their hopes.

What we start with, then, is an issue. Within a group, one or more people visualize potential solutions for that issue. Does the person who visualizes the best solution become the leader with his or her solution adopted? Often, the answer is “No.”

Creating Trust is Essential

We frequently see people turn against a good solution because the presenter does not present a compelling message or the presenter is not someone with whom they are comfortable. The prospective leader must generate trust. Seasoned leaders recognize these problems and arm themselves with multiple leadership approaches to handle the situations they may encounter.

Practical leaders recognize that leadership starts with a state of mind: they believe that conditions can change for the better. Practical leaders also believe the group can be much more effective than its individuals at creating that change. In other words, the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. These beliefs are evident in how the leader presents to the group. Members of the group feel they are seeing the authentic person, who speaks with integrity on the issues and solution and in a way that will benefit a group larger just than himself.

Practical leaders appreciate that leadership is a process. They know that the process ideally begins before a need for a leader emerges – and the process continues until after the solution is accepted by the group and implemented. At its simplest, the process consists of three actions: building rapport, delivering a compelling message and following through on the promise. The devil, of course, lies in the details, as you aren’t a leader if you don’t have followers – and it is very easy to lose followers along the way. That’s where having varied leadership approaches in their toolkit becomes important.

Leadership Skills: Build on Strengths and Add New Skills

Seasoned leaders continually build on their existing skills and add new skills to their toolkit. That is what differentiates them from the masses of mere managers. Practical leaders know that they can lose a potential follower in less than a tenth of a second, but that they haven’t gained a new follower until trust exists and their message has resonated personally for that person. People take in information and messages in different ways and hold different values. Experienced Leaders recognize this and selectively use many different leadership tools that are in tune with folks in his audience. Similarly, the proficient leader aligns his message to support the values of different people, but only in ways that maintain his integrity and authenticity as a leader.

Leadership, then, is a state of mind and a process through which a large set of skills is used to positively influence a group to want to act in concert to achieve a common goal. It is not an innate talent possessed by a few lucky individuals. All of us can become adept in its tenets and practice. It simply requires commitment to being authentic and learning and practicing the leadership process and skills. Opportunities exist to use our leadership skills everyday and in many different ways, so we can help ourselves and others achieve important goals by committing ourselves to taking the path to enhancing our leadership skills.

We all have what it takes to be a leader. The first skill to hone is building trust, which we’ll emphasize in the next post.