"Leadership"...the holy grail of work life. Can't succeed without it. All the best people have it.
But...to be a leader, you gotta have followers. Followers want to follow a strong leader. And, a leader isn't a leader without followers. The spectre of the chicken-and-the-egg rears its head.
Where DOES one get that very first follower/team member/groupie/fan/business partner? ("Followers-R-Us" isn't an option...I checked.)
I got a bit of insight this week. I hate to draw a broad, sweeping conclusion from it, so I won't. But, I did get a glimpse of how a person can develop a following, without actively trying to do so.
I was taking off my figure skates in the rink lobby, watching other skaters, including international competitors, warm up. A beautiful young woman walked past...and I was riveted. I literally couldn't look away. It wasn't her fabulous black lycra-and-mesh leotard that held my gaze. It was her posture. She could have been the model for my 1922 Emily Post etiquette book, page 262 "How To Walk Across A Ballroom".
In that instant, this young athlete became a leader, and I became her follower. I don't need or want the rest of her lifestyle or skills (although I'd happily take knees that don't ache), but I want to walk with the same unselfconscious, commanding presence.
Several years ago, another skater, a young man competing at the senior level, watched me do my little program over the course of several days, then asked me: "How do you smile when the program isn't going well?" Surprised, (because I assumed this would have been part of his training) I answered, "Simple. The smile is choreography. It has nothing to do with feeling." He looked thoughtful. For that one very specific thing, I might have been a leader.
Maybe the goal of being a leader gets painted with too broad a brush: You are or you aren't. All or nothing. Maybe leadership has many facets, different ones of which "catch the light" for different people.
Once leadership quality I've beat the drum for is "championship focus" on "the very next thing." My struggle to master the art of performing a skating program in front of an audience, without coming completely unstitched, took fourteen years. You can pack a whole lotta humiliation in that time frame, but I was determined to master performing. Other people did...I could too.
As it turns out, there are elite skaters in the very highest ranks of world competitors, who haven't mastered the art of performing either. It's not hard to spot who they are. One fall, one bobble...and that's it. They mentally abandon their technique and try to muscle through on emotion. It came to me in a flash, one day, that these skaters were leaders for me in a reverse kind of way: I could never, ever hope to have their physical skills, but I could surpass them in focus. And laser-like focus on the very next thing was the key to performing. Now, I can pass that insight along to others. Maybe that's one little facet of leadership.
Got leadership? My guess is...you probably do.
