Is Great Leadership a Real Thing?

Or are we chasing unicorns?

I’ve read a lot about what great leadership is, what great leaders do, and the impact great leadership has on teams and the businesses. However, from my experience and from recent discussions, it seems that these great leaders are like unicorns and more mythical than real.

Maybe it’s because there is so much a leader has to do that they can really only focus on one thing or a few things at a time. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand what the leaders do. Maybe it’s because the people I’ve spoken to don’t know what leaders do. Maybe it’s because great leadership isn’t real.

Maybe, though, it’s because I have been judging leaders unfairly.

Judging Leaders

As a coach, I have been trained to approach my clients with unconditional positive regard, suspending judgement, assuming nothing and questioning everything from a place of curiosity. Maybe in my journey to dive into the topic of leadership, I have not applied these principles in a way that would enable my own learning and understanding. I’ve heard many leaders say that they want their teams to understand that they are also human, but I’ve not really embraced this. I’ve not really defined what this means, and I have not interrogated this sufficiently from a place on non-judgemental curiosity.

So I decided that it was time to own my ignorance and explore this topic.

Can Leaders be Great at Everything Simultaneously

A key question that I keep coming back to is: Are we holding up our leaders to unattainable standard? Given the complexity of the elements that a leader must deal with every day, can we and should we expect our leaders to be simultaneously “great” across all elements of leadership?

For example, in the book CEO Excellence, the authors frame up the responsibilities of CEO with the following model under 6 responsibilities and 18 practices:

If you really look at the elements included in this model, you begin to understand how much leadership entails at this level. And while it may be tempting to think “that’s why they get paid the big bucks”, it’s not really fair and nor is it really true.

Is it truly possible to focus on all these things at the time? Given that we know that multi-tasking is not real or effective, how then do leaders do all these things?

The truth is that they will flex between these elements, focusing on what’s important. They focus on what’s important and keep an eye on the balance. They are constantly balancing the now and the future and assessing what needs to done and deciding what they will do next. It’s a complex and complicated process of prioritising what it important and seeing around the corner for intended and unintended consequences.

Leadership Pressure and Impact

If you consider your career and your job, consider how you prioritise your work and your focus. Consider the consequences of your decisions: is it likely that the trajectory of the entire business could change based on your one decision? Is it possible that your decision could lead ultimately to the failure of the entire business? Will someone lose their job and their financial security because of the decisions that you made today?

I would suggest that the decisions most of us make on a day-to-day basis would not result in the closure of the business.

I would suggest that for many of us, we cannot appreciate the pressure applied to leaders from many angles.

I would suggest that we do hold our leaders to impossible ideals that we ourselves may not fully understand.

And perhaps part of that could be laid at our leaders’ feet for not being transparent and not communicating the complexity of their work. Perhaps more open and vulnerable discussions about what is really being done in the vaulted towers of leadership would help us have, an if not an understanding, then a level of appreciation for what is being done to drive the business.

In Support of Leadership

The reality is, like most things in life, great leadership is a journey.

As much as each of us are on our own personal journeys, we could afford our leaders with the same grace. As each of us learn and grow within our own spheres, we could embrace empathy for our leaders, knowing that learning comes from making mistakes. We could balance our appreciation of what and how our leaders have achieved what they have, supporting their leadership credibility without the need to break down what you think might have gone wrong or be going wrong.

I’m not suggesting that a person who is in a leadership position is a good leader because of the position they hold. Real leadership is an action not an organisational position. Real leadership is balancing opposing tensions as effectively as possible often with incomplete information. Maybe if we judge the outcome and not the person, we can all learn how to do better next time.

So, I do think that great leadership is a real thing:

• I think that great leadership is really hard to attain and even harder to maintain.
• I believe that great leadership makes a real difference to people and businesses.
• I think that great leadership is really about a constant focus on learning, adjusting, reflecting, and taking calculated risks.
• I think that great leadership is enabled not only by a leader’s own skills and mindsets, but by the skills and mindsets of those around them.
• I think that real leadership comes from a place of transparency, humility and often vulnerability

Some leaders are born, while more are made than born. While I think that leadership can be learned, I also think that not everyone is a leadership position will be a great leader. There are a lot of factors that will create the situation where a person in a leadership position may never embody real leadership. These reasons are usually centred around a limited self-awareness from the individual, but there can also be other compounding causes.

So, before we judge our leaders too harshly, maybe we should step back and reflect on how we would do in their shoes. If you think you are ready for a leadership position, I encourage you to engage in conversations with leaders about what they really do and how they do it and help them make leadership real.