Developing Your People to Achieve Purpose
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Keys to Leadership
Here are our main keys to leadership:
- Leadership is the act of developing your people to “achieve purpose.” So you must set the direction for your role, team, organization, and/or movement. Don’t outsource it.
- Show charisma by truly caring about others, have strong self-confidence, and demonstrate a high degree of presence.
- Understand your strengths and weaknesses. Get independent assessments to delve deep.
- Challenge your assumptions and avoid overconfidence. It can be easy to get overconfident and assume things will continue to go well. Always find and really consider one realistic opposing view.
Defining Key Terms
Leadership
We define leadership as the act of developing your people to “achieve purpose” (Martin Luther King Jr.). Leadership must be done in collaboration with others and in particular, it means you must support the growth/improvement of your people.
Marshall Ganz adds on to this definition to say leadership is the act of “accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve purpose under conditions of uncertainty.”
Note on leadership in organizing
In an organizing context, leaders are those who take public-facing roles on campaigns, projects, and initiatives and/or serve as public voices for issues. A key organizer’s role is to develop leaders.
Authority
Leadership is more than a title. Therefore, even if you are the CEO, director, or elected official, that does not mean you are a leader.
Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky write that authority comes from having certain roles to accomplish tasks and responsibilities. They write “We all want to believe that we can exercise leadership just by doing really, really well on the job we are expected to carry out,” but authority itself fails to meet the threshold of leadership.
Principles, Mindsets, and Habits of Effective Leaders
Stick to Your Life Purpose
Whether your purpose is to support others, push for justice and equity, or provide for your family, you must stay consistently on your path. Zixia said “Extend your learning and hold fast to your purpose, question closely and mediate on things at hand, there you will find the fullness of your humanity.”
Leaders Must Set the Direction
Deborah Gruenfeld notes in Acting with Power while you absolutely want buy-in and collaboration, a leader should always take responsibility for setting a strong vision/goals/strategy for their people/organization. Never, “delegate the process of defining the vision, goals, or strategy.”
Show (All) People You Care About Them
As the leader on a team, organization, or in the community, people will look to you. Rather than be distant and elevate yourself, you should seek to uplift others and show you care about people. Remember to show this concern for not just those directly around you, but to all in your constituency.
Learn How To Self-Regulate Our Power
Deborah Gruenfeld writes in Acting with Power, “Power is disinhibiting…Power makes people more likely to act on both their best and their worst instincts…” It makes it much easier for someone to justify to themselves that they are acting in everyone’s best interest when it might just be about themselves. Be completely transparent about your work, any personal benefits, etc. so that others can help you evaluate whether you are using your power well.
Challenge Your Assumptions + Avoid Overconfidence
When things are going well it can be easy to get overconfident and assume things will continue to go well. Adam Grant in Think Again notes studies that show finding just one reason “why we might be wrong can be enough to curb overconfidence.”
Adam Grant in Think Again notes another way we can do this is to build a challenge network, not just a support network (i.e., people around us who challenge us to think critically and revisit our assumptions, instead of just saying how good a job we are doing.). In Originals an example he notes is that struggling CEOs tend to retreat to their inner circle of friends for advice, which does not tend to help the situation. Instead studies found that the companies only improved when the CEO found outsiders to challenge them to fix their mistakes.
Understand Your Own Strengths and Weaknesses
Asking yourself and others to reflect on your own strengths and weaknesses is important to figuring out how to build on what you already do well, and then also figuring out what you can do to improve.
Attunement
Daniel Pink in To Sell Is Human notes the importance of attunement (i.e., understanding another person’s view. “The capability to step outside our own experience and imagine the emotions, perceptions, and motivations of another”) vs. empathy (i.e., feeling how another person feels).
It is better to be “attuned” to another person’s view. Empathy is good as well, but attunement is even better.
Others Watch Your Actions and Language
Whether you consider yourself a leader or not, others may consider you a leader. So you need to uphold strong practices and models of behavior, since others will be watching intentionally or not. Confucius said ‘Virtue is not solitary; it always has neighbors.”
It can be (and must be) you
When discussing the beginnings of the nonviolent movement to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, Srdja Popovic said they kept waiting for someone else to take the lead. Finally, they realized that they could not rely on the hope that someone else would make the change. They decided they had to change their mindset and started to talk as if it had to be them. In your efforts to make change, do not feel you need to wait on someone else to make a difference.
Charisma
Overview
Olivia Fox Cabane writes in The Charisma Myth that charisma is the ability to project “personal magnetism” and presence, along with fostering strong emotions and actions in others. At its core, charisma is about how you make others feel (e.g., making others feeling heard, happy, or motivated).
Here are some of the keys to charisma Cabane mentions:
- Show you care about others – Charismatic people focus intensely on you and give the impression that they care about you as a person.
- Demonstrate a high degree of both “high power” and “high warmth.” – Charismatic individuals “remove self-doubt” to show “they belong” and that their “skills and passions are valuable and interesting to others.”
- Exhibit “extraordinary presence” and “warmth” in the moment – Charismatic individuals make you feel that, “they’re completely here with you, in this moment.”
Key Practices to Demonstrate Charisma
Olivia Fox Cabane shares these recommendations in The Charisma Myth about how to demonstrate charisma:
- Your body language is just as important as what you say.
- People remember stories, examples, and anecdotes best. So to get people immersed in what you are discussing, be visual.
- Remember to keep good eye contact with those to whom you are speaking. Cabane writes, “In fact, eye contact is one of the main ways charismatic masters make you feel that you are the most important person in the room.”
- Focus your thoughts on the person to whom you are talking. It can be easy to think of other things in the background of your mind, but others tend to pick up on that. So, you must remain “present.”
- When talking with others, remember to “keep the spotlight on the other person and make them feel good about themselves.”
- Listen (really listen!) without interrupting others (even if they interrupt you).