We are in a series on leadership. If you missed some of the previous articles in this series, you can read them here: one, two, thee, four. Today we are talking about leadership myths.
We aren’t taught leadership in school much, so it’s easy to have a few misconceptions about what it takes to be a good leader. I want to dispel some myths about leadership today so that you can see yourself as a leader or see that you can become one.
Myth 1: Leaders are born
You’ve probably heard, “leaders are born, not made.” I’ve talked about this before, and it’s worth repeating. Leaders are not born that way. They grow into it, and you can too. In fact, we all are leaders in various places in our life. If you have ever influenced someone to do something, you exhibited leadership.
Leaders aren’t born, yet there is a difference between doing leadership and being a leader. I talk more about this specific idea here. It’s more than being in the right position. Real leaders don’t need the position or title to lead. If you don’t feel you are a leader yet, the simplest thing is to become filled with compassion for people. See yourself in them. And see where things need to go. If you lead from this place, people will want to follow.
Truth: Leaders are made, not born.
Myth 2: Leaders can’t make mistakes
It’s a common myth that leaders must always make the right decisions. They can’t make any mistakes, or they’re done as a leader. That’s just unrealistic. No one can make the right decision all the time, or never make a mistake.
This myth also runs counter to really good leadership. Mistakes aren’t something to avoid, they’re how you get there. The only way to be good at something is to make the mistakes so you can learn. This is true of leadership as well. Really good leaders will make more mistakes in a month or a week than most people make in a year. That’s how they learn success and good leadership.
And as you’ll read below, the leader really doesn’t have to make all the decisions anyway.
Truth: Good leaders make mistakes frequently.
Myth 3: Leaders tell people what to do
Myth 4: Leaders must know how to get there
Myths 3 and 4 are different but they are connected so I will talk about them together. I held myth 4 for quite a while. If I didn’t know how to get there, I wouldn’t step in. What was I supposed to tell people? The trouble is that I was also thinking that the leader must tell people what to do, Myth 3.
A few years back I was at an event where a group of about 50 of us were supposed to all get over a 20 foot wall. I really wanted to step into leadership on this. But I didn’t know how to get over the wall, so, I held back. Then this other fellow jumps up and says, “Who’s done this before? Tell us how we can get over the wall.” D’oh!
This fellow didn’t know how to get over the wall, and he didn’t tell us what to do. He just made sure we all heard from the few people who had done this sort of thing before, and we knew what we had to do. That day, he lead, and I didn’t, but I got to learn something about leadership.
Truth: Leaders just need to know where we are going. They don’t need to know how to get there, and they don’t need to tell people what to do.
Myth 5: Leaders are in the front and visible
Most folks in the front of the room appear to be the leaders, and we often don’t really see other people leading. However, often the key influencers in the room aren’t the ones up front. Have you ever asked a group a question and everyone looks to the guy off to the side before answering? That guy off to the side is the true leader. He’s the one every one is looking to. If this guy doesn’t like what you are proposing, your proposal is toast unless you can get that guy on your side. It won’t matter who’s sitting up front and what they believe.
What I most want you to know, though, is that if being up front scares you, you don’t have to be the one up front to lead and influence. A huge part of leadership is influencing people, sharing what you see from your vantage point, and sharing your vision of the future. And you can do this from lots of places and positions.
Truth: You can lead from the front, the back, the side, or just about anywhere.
Myth 6: Leaders have to make all the decisions
This myth is easy to believe because this is how many organizations in business run. The manager makes all the decisions, or possibly even, your manager always asks his manager and so on.
In a lot of leadership/manager training, they will tell you to instead have your people make the decisions. If you don’t trust their decisions, you need to build trust with them or get different people.
It’s exhausting to have people come into your office all day long asking you to make a decision. What’s worse is that this decreases your effectiveness as a leader. You can’t think about where the organization or project is going if you’re deciding all the minutia of the day.
For the most part, a good leader’s job to keep everyone’s eye on the vision, and say something like, “This way. Over here. A little to the right. This way. You got it. Doing great! This way.” Assuming people want to get to that same place where you are pointing, you can trust your followers to figure out a whole lot on their own.
Truth: Good leaders let others make most of the decisions and make only a few key decisions themselves.
Myth 7: There is only one leader
A lot of times we think, oh this guy is already the leader, so I can’t lead. However, if you look carefully, in any organization or group there is often more than one leader. They may have separate responsibilities, or they may overlap a lot with different styles. There’s no set way of doing it.
Just because someone is already leading doesn’t mean there’s not room for you to step in and lead an area you care about. Perhaps you see something is not getting done. You can lead this. Of course, you don’t want to offend the current leader. Yet you can say, hey, I noticed this isn’t getting done, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to start something for this.”
Truth: Usually there is room for more leaders.
We are over managed and under lead. In fact a lot of people don’t see the difference between managing and leading – so much so, that most of use are very busy but have little sense of direction in our lives. We focus on doing things right, but rarely do we make sure we are doing the right things. I encourage you to see the leader in you. The world needs more leaders. Will you lead?
