A "natural leader"

What is a "natural leader"?

I got to thinking about this the other day while considering my two older boys.  They are just kids, and like anybody they are complicated and multi-faceted individuals.  For the sake of this example, I'm going to just treat them as simple stereotypes.

Jack is my older son.  He is naturally charismatic and has a large group of acquaintances and friends.  He charms children and adults with his easy style and effusive character.  Other kids naturally follow his example, want to play games that he devises and generally look to him for leadership.  At the same time, Jack is not very concerned about others.  He is often dismissive of others' feelings.

Ethan is my middle son (I have another, even younger son).  Ethan is very empathetic and quickly identifies the needs and emotional wants of others.  He feels deeply and shows great concern for the development and well-being of other kids (including his brothers).  Ethan does not display the same sort of outward and obvious charm that Jack does, he has his own (very unusual) sense of style and in general is not a "popular" sort of kid.  Other kids don't naturally flock to him, and he has very few acquaintances and just a few close friendships.

So, in this either-or scenario, who is the "natural leader"?  Jack is the one that people naturally want to follow, but Ethan is the one who possesses the emotional intelligence and selfless concern that characterizes great leaders.

The easy answer is to say that neither is really a natural leader, and that a natural leader is someone who possesses both characteristics.  I think that answer is wrong, though.  There is a lot of literature on leadership that seems to indicate that really successful leaders are often not the big keynote, charm-the-audience types, but more of the help-develop-your-people-though-honest-methods types.  We all remember Steve Jobs, but who ever really wanted to work for him?

Update:
I see this thing from time to time and it gets me to thinking:

At first glance it's very heart-warming and embraces diversity and has a cute girl standing akimbo with a soft-focus field and really seems like a great idea!  Except this... "Bossy" is not a leadership skill.  "Bossy" is a completely unnatural leader--bossy is a person who wants others to do what she says to do.  Bossy doesn't imply that others want to follow.  Bossy doesn't imply that you care about what's best for others, or that you're qualified to lead at all.  Bossy just means that you want to lead.

Really makes me wonder about Sheryl Sandberg that she doesn't seem to know the difference.


What do you think?

Management Fail!

A developer in my org came to me with a technical question she was working on puzzling out around something we call "Decision Units" in portfolio.  Decision units itself is a topic worth its own post, and not really important here, but the gist of it boiled down to this:

Her: "We have a problem handling decision units that exist in multiple business units, where analysts in different groups aren't aware of all of the logic relationships that might exist for that project."

Me: "What's the problem?"

Her: "Well, the way we're handling things right now, if anybody makes a change to the logical relationships for a given project --if they add a dependency or some sort of optional relationship or anything-- it will wipe out all the stored values for that project.  Worse yet, the analyst who loaded them before won't know they were wiped out, and when they go back to load them again, there will be a bunch of new alternatives there that they never heard of!"

Me: "That is a problem!  What do you think we can do about it?"

She gave me a good explanation of the issue that indicated she understood both the technical character of the problem and the business character of the problem. 

She really had her head around the thing.  She then delivered a very technical, possible solution that involved setting some flags and having users determine several things in advance and some other business rules around the process flow.

Me: "I think we can do something simpler.  Here's what I think..."

And then I went on to sort of brainstorm out a couple of default states and business rules that eliminated most of the possible sources of trouble.  Lastly, I sketched out an approach that would handle the last situations elegantly and simply and without requiring the users to do anything they weren't already doing.

Her: "Wow! That was really great!  I'm glad I came to you.  Here I was, thinking of something super-complicated and all I needed was to talk to you and you had a simple answer right away!  Thanks!"

I felt pretty good about myself for a few minutes and then realized I had totally failed her as a manager.

With a little coaching I'm pretty sure that she could have come with the answer on her own.  Maybe a few questions, or at the very least I could have structured the conversation more collaboratively.  I sort of pontificated how I think it should work and we were done.  My developer was left maybe feeling good about my skills, but probably a little less confident in her own.  That's a big fail as a manager.

this is a clever metaphor!

I think this sort of thing is why it's very hard for managers to make those "Career Pipeline" transitions from independent contributor (IC) to manager.  We build up these technical skills and are rewarded for them, and often they become a source of pride and self-worth.  When problems come along that are in the sweet spot, we think immediately of a fix.  We miss the chance to do our new job, which is coach the person bringing the problem as they figure out a fix.

Career Capital - Useful traits

What are the personality traits that are associated with a good employee?  When hiring, what should you look for?

Conversely, we all work for somebody so what are the traits we should develop in ourselves?

I saw this list some place.  It isn't mine, but I can't remember where I found it.  It's a good list:

1. Action-oriented
2. Intelligent
3. Ambitious
4. Autonomous
5. Leadership
6. Cultural fit (personality)
7. Upbeat
8. Confident
9. Successful
10. Honest
11. Detail oriented
12. Modest
13. Hard-working / results-oriented
14. Marketable / presentable
15. passionate

I think one of the most interesting ones on that list is "marketable/presentable".  I know many people who fail to separate their work persona from their personal life persona.  I sometimes struggle with this, as well.  There is a constant battle between being authentic and being marketable.

If your personal life persona is naturally highly-polished, buttoned-down and carefully worded then that's probably fine -- lucky you!  If your natural persona is not highly diplomatic and you aspire to a role that requires careful diplomacy then there's a conflict -- adopt a different work persona or adopt a different career objective or prepare for a pretty frustrating slog.