A key question we need to ask ourselves as we move deeper into this new year of 2017 is are we a/the leader of our organization or are we actually leading our organization? What’s the difference? The leader is the person who is at the top of the org chart, or at some level in the org chart where he or she is responsible to lead or manage others. The leader is not necessarily leading. Leading means someone is following. Leaders are fired or dismissed or quit every day because no one is following.
So, how do we ensure we’re leading and we aren’t just the leader in title only? The short answer to that question is: develop trust. When people trust us they follow us. When they don’t trust us, they don’t follow. It doesn’t matter whether we’re responsible for signing their paychecks, evaluating their performance or what other leverage we may think we have over people, if they don’t trust us eventually they won’t follow us.
For many years, I have said, “Everything in life eventually comes down to trust and control.” When we trust someone or something we don’t try to control it, but when we don’t trust someone or something we do. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a spouse, a child, an employee, a boss, or even a family pet, when we trust the other, we give that other freedom, and we listen when the person interacts with us. When we don’t trust the other whether that person is our “subordinate” or our “boss” we will either attempt to exercise control over them, or control our relationship with them, so we don’t have to be in the position of having to trust him.
If we’re leaders then, it’s imperative that we lead! We lead by knowing why we’re leading in the first place. As Simon Sinek states in his book Start With Why, unless someone know why they’re leading and believe in that cause, he or she will always resort to some form of manipulation in order to lead. It’s inherently easier to trust a leader who knows why he or she is leading, and the cause goes beyond the leader’s own benefit. After all, it isn’t really leadership to self-promote. Leadership is only necessary when we have a defined cause that is greater than ourselves, and we are championing that cause to some constituency, whether employees, voters, parishioners or friends. When we start with why, and champion that cause we nearly always move from being leaders to leading.
As already stated, people need to be able to trust us in order to follow us. Trust is hard to define. In fact, reducing trust to metrics alone is impossible. After all, we all know people who are extremely successful and we don’t trust them as far as we could throw them. On the other hand, we know others who don’t have great portfolios and yet we trust them with our lives. Perhaps the biggest single contributor to whether we trust someone or not is integrity, that is whether what they do is consistent with their why. When a person says, “I’m here to make sure the employees know they are valued and to make it easier to succeed in every department,” but she never interacts with an employee, and never visits any of the departments, there’s an immediate disconnect. Trust as they say is earned not simply given.
The more consistent we are with being what we say we are, the more people trust us. Thus, trust takes time. We become leaders the moment we are elected, appointed or self-appoint ourselves into a position. We actually lead when people are willing to follow. At the end of the day, it takes relationships, meaningful relationships in order to lead. Being a leader others want to follow means being a person with whom others want to relate. Take some time right now to reflect on your leadership. Are you leading or are you just the leader? What will it take to be a more effective leader, for people to want to follow you more in 2017? Taking the time to reflect on those questions, to answer them and then to live into them may well be the most important thing you do to improve your leadership in 2017.
Here’s to leading better, by actually leading–today!