The final pillar to discuss is “leadership.” Notice that it lays horizontal, not vertical and is at the opposite end of “purpose.” The reason for this graphical positioning is that leadership is a foundation to build upon. Think of it like a basement. Before you build the house, a foundation is laid and in the case of homes with basements, two “foundations” of sorts are created. The first is the concrete flooring that supports the beams upon which is built the first floor, which, in turn, holds the visible structure of the house.

When you look at successful people and true leaders, you are only seeing the house—the visible example of what true leadership can create. Hidden are the other pillars that support that structure. Trust me, they are there in some form or another.

Specifics on Leadership

Leadership isn’t an action by itself. You don’t have to lead to be a leader. And those who lead don’t always have leadership skills.

I once worked for a CEO who led without being a leader. Because he lacked leadership skills, his decisions were all random acts of leading, often conflicting each other. I saw him make two opposing decisions on the same day. Quite often he would tell one department to do “x” but then let himself be dissuaded by another department, commanding them instead to do “y”. Did he tell the team tasked with doing “x” that he had chosen a different path? No. He didn’t want the confrontation. Needless to say, his term in office didn’t last long.

He was a leader who lacked leadership.

Leadership is the inner strength to make tough decisive decisions when needed while also knowing when not to make a choice at all. It’s the ability to have an opinion, but know when not to state it; to seek council before arriving to conclusions; and to maintain a forward path just long enough to measure its success or failure. It is also is the ability to lead by metrics, not opinion; to realize being wrong isn’t humiliating, but essential; and being right isn’t something a leader can be 100% of the time. It’s the talent necessary to focus on everyone but you; to build your team and transition the right people into leadership while weeding out those who threaten the morality of the team.

Summary

Leadership is the essence of pragmatic balance.  And that’s a state of mind and being that position can’t give you. It’s something you give yourself by establishing a purpose, being deferential, entrepreneurial and evangelistic.

A position can’t give you leadership; but you can bring leadership to your position.

We work with an entrepreneur-executive coach named Debbie King. She’s a Californian who dresses like a tree-hugger and wears billowy, comfortable guru-type clothing and wire-rim glasses. Before Scale, she coached Intel executives for many years. Her degree is in marriage and family therapy, a pedigree unusual for the corporate world. Yet, it works. She says a corporation is one big family with similar conflicts, wars and competing interests.hu

She’s got that right.

We recently hired a new VP of Operations, Doug. Poor guy. His first foray into the Scale management team was a dinner at a burger joint in Las Vegas’ Rio casino (just off the strip).

Deb says our management is, hmmm, “honest” with each other. That’s one way of putting it, dear guru. We tend to enjoy our “honesty” by whacking each other over the head with facts, interpretations, and obvious conclusions made somewhat obscure because we usually don’t listen to each other for the first 50 minutes of any debate.

Doug said it was great. The look on his face, however, belied the internal panic he surely was feeling.

Some may observe an organizationally challenged approach to management. There are times when our CPO and CTO will stand up and both accuse each other of not knowing technology from an awkwardly positioned corncob. Sales will claim marketing never sends them anything, and I’ll posture that sales is always wrong—a general, but accurate statement.  Our CFO doesn’t really understand high finance. He’s concerned with burn rates and cash and doesn’t understand that flying me first class really could be more beneficial for the business. Then there’s Rod. He’s our financial planning and analysis guy. If MBAs had cookie-cutters, Rod would have stepped right out of it. He’s our gingerbread man of metrics and continually publishes facts that interfere with our assumptions. Our VP of Sales tells him so, quiet directly.

Deb says every company goes through its stages. We’re at the part where fast growth (see next week’s press release) is pushing us quickly into the hardest phase. The run of fun is over, the company is up and running and now we entrepreneurs need to focus on building. It’s this phase where ten ounces of effort produces one ounce of results; doers become managers; and the executive team will clash swords regularly.

We’re here, for sure.  What helps us get through is that we all respect each other and exercise one of the most important, but often overlooked Pillar of Leadership: Deference. After wrangling, clashing and humorous name-calling, we’ll all eventually defer to common sense and, yes, reluctantly, facts.

We also have Jeff (pictured here), the CEO. He’s an effective leader. He’ll often sit back and watch us kill each other for a time. Then, he’ll surface and state the obvious we so eagerly rejected or blinded ourselves to at the beginning of the debate. I’ll look at Alan and say, “Jeff’s right—that’s exactly what I was saying.” Alan will say the same to me, and, inevitably, everyone agrees that the thing Jeff said is what each of us attempted to communicate in the first place. Then, it’s over. We defer to a conclusion, move on and laugh about the good barbs that came up during the last battle royal.

I’m off to California today for a board meeting. Should be fun. Our team is in sync; we have a plan and know how to execute.

I might pick up some guru-style clothes while I’m out there; after this last quarter, I feel worthy.

Evangelism is a noun that means missionary-like zeal, purpose or activity.

Corporate evangelism was pioneered by Mike Murray, the director of marketing for Apple’s Macintosh division in 1983. Mike hired people to evangelize Apple to developers. One of those evangelists was Guy Kawasaki, who later wrote a book on the subject called Selling the Dream: How to Promote Your Product, Company, or Ideas–and Make a Difference–Using Everyday Evangelism.

In his book, Guy differentiates between sales and evangelism.

Evangelism isn’t exercised with the goal of selling. Yet, selling is a welcomed outcome of evangelism. So what gives? In the context of leadership, the evangelical trait deploys most obviously with change management. When change occurs or is occurring in an organization, people tend shift into one of these four predictable dispositions:

1. Lock and Load. You know these folks. Maybe you are one. When change occurs, the natural instinct is to lock the cube and load up the defensive weaponry.
2. Save the Career. Some jump into uber-cooperation mode in an attempt to show flexibility and support. These people agree to just about anything and invite change on their department simply by being overly cooperative. What they don’t realize is that management views over-cooperation as lack of leadership or, in the worst case, a willingness to default on leadership and let others solve their problems.
3. Do nothing. This one’s easy. People often think that if I just hunker down and maintain my routine, I won’t be noticed. That’s not usually the case, however.
4. Stand up and Lead. This last case is the most rare, but the best one to have.

1. Don’t defend the status quo.
2. Don’t aggressively work to destroy things that are working.
3. Understand the principle reasons behind management’s change and work to apply them to general tactics of your department or area of responsibility.
4. Evangelize a new position for the future with the goal of influencing the way management views your department.
5. Use passionate, measured, pragmatic, data-rich argument to positively alter the present and future view management will have of you.

Leaders are evangelists and change agents. They don’t force a sale, they influence a change of mind. And in doing so, sell their ideas.