So, in this clip of Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile, who, exactly, is the leader?



Chris Brasher is the leader.
Then Chris Chataway is the leader.
Then Roger Bannister is the leader.

All within the space of four minutes. Well, 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

It wasn't a race, by the way. Brasher and Chataway were pacesetting for Bannister; leading him, pulling him on to succeed, supporting him. Like great leaders do.

Acts of leadership like this one are in fact collaborations in which people take turns to lead. The myth of 'the leader' stops us recognizing this obvious truth. Stop viewing leadership through the lens of 'the leader'. Start thinking 'acts of leadership' rather than 'leader' and you are better equipped to help build an organization, team or unit full of acts of collaborative leadership.

Labels: acts of leadership, collaborative leadership, team leadership

I've been reading Machiavelli's The Prince out of curiosity - to see if there is anything relevant to modern organizational leadership.

If you tiptoe through the Realpolitik and sidestep the recurring need for Princes to slaughter whole towns to prove they are not to be trifled with, you can find some interesting stuff relevant to leading Mergers and Acquisitions and one or two other modern leadership problems.

But, overall, Machiavelli is a bit too literal on reducing headcount to be of much use today.

Then I came across this:

“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain from the new one.”

That was written in 1513.

Nothing new under the sun.

Labels: change, Machiavelli

I heard Greg Dyke, former Director General of the BBC, say this today, when asked what he had achieved as boss of that organization. "It's a popular thing to talk about legacy now; what your legacy is. I just wanted people to be happier than they were before I arrived at the BBC."

Which reminded me of this story that I heard Nigel Paine, Head of People Development at the BBC, tell:

When Dyke resigned suddenly, eight thousand BBC employees massed in the street outside his office. It was spontaneous. “When he came back into the offices after going out to thank them, he didn't realise that half his face was plastered with lipstick. He looked like a circus clown. These people just wanted to thank him for inspiring them”, said Nigel Paine. "It was an extraordinary, spontaneous outburst."

Sounds like he achieved it. Would people take to the streets in protest when you leave? Of course leadership isn't a popularity contest. But, this was about inspiring people and reconnecting them with the reasons they joined the BBC in the first place. That's what they were showing appreciation for.

Labels: legacy

This reminded me of how young people see corporate leadership, as quoted in The Kids Are Alright, which is all about how the gamer generation are changing the workplace. "Leaders? We don't need no stinking leaders" is the chapter heading in the book that this brought to mind.

I just received a very nice email from the brilliant David Taylor, author of The Naked Leader, and spent ages staring at his signature at the end of the email. It's here:

Fulfilling the promise of your first few seconds

While ensuring no regrets in your last

I love that. It's like a mantra for leadership: making sure that we ourselves and others we encounter fulfill our promise.

The Naked Leader

Labels: Naked Leader, What Leadership Is

"The original sense of the hipster term 'cool' referred to the capacity of African American jazz musicians who could control their rage at the racism of the times, even as they channeled that anger into an extraordinary expression of deep feeling. Effective leadership demands the same sort of capacity for managing one's own turbulent feelings while allowing the full expression of positive emotions."
- Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman

You pick up all kinds of interesting information in Daniel Goleman books...

Source: Lewis MacAdams, Birth of Cool: Beat, Bebop and the American Avant-Garde, New York, Free Press, 2001

Labels: Daniel+Goleman, E+I