What Is Leadership?

Excerpted from
Coaching Your Kids to Be Leaders: The Keys to Unlocking Their Potential
By Pat Williams

Leadership is the ability to achieve goals through people. Leaders get things done-not through their own effort, but through the combined efforts of people. A military leader achieves victory on the battlefield through his soldiers. A coach achieves victory on the athletic field through the players on the team. A political leader achieves a visionary goal through the people of his or her administration.

To measure the effectiveness of a leader, don't look at the leader. Look at the followers. Look at the organization. Look at the results. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether the leader is articulate, charming, or busy all the time. In the final analysis, the only question that truly matters is this: Does that leader achieve results through people?

Jose Abreu, secretary of transportation for the state of Florida, told me, "Whether I'm leading the Florida Department of Transportation or coaching a team of Little Leaguers, my task is essentially the same. My job is to shape consensus and build team unity so that the team can achieve its goals.

"I used to coach my son's Little League team in Hialeah. It was a team of overachievers. Nobody thought our team had the talent to go undefeated, yet there was one season in which we won every game we played. During one of the games that season, I overheard a parent of one of the boys on the opposing team. 'Look at those kids!' he said, referring to our team. 'Look at the way they follow instructions! I don't know if I'd want my son to be on his team. They look more like synchronized sewing machines than real people.'

"That parent meant it as a disparaging remark. He saw the kids on our team as robots. But they weren't robots. They were a team! They took direction; they were coordinated; they acted as one. I took that comment as a compliment to my ability to get our team to win games when no one thought they could."

A leader gets things done through people. Does this mean the people in the organization or team feel used or manipulated? Do they feel as if they are being treated like robots? Absolutely not! People admire leaders who challenge and direct them to achieve great things. Its an exhilarating experience to be a part of a team effort, to make progress toward an envisioned goal, and to know that you have a leader who is taking you to that goal.

People can tell when a formal leader lacks the ability to lead. Given the choice between an incompetent formal leader and a competent informal leader, people will follow the competent informal leader every time. So it is important that we put people with authentic leadership ability into formal leadership positions.

Michael Means, CEO of Health First, Inc., told me, "My first real leadership opportunity came through the military. After joining the U.S. Army Reserve in 1971, I was sent to basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington. On the first day of basic training, I was selected as a platoon guide, probably because I was six feet four inches and had a degree in business administration from the University of Florida. I am fairly confident that my selection had nothing to do with any inherent leadership skills on my part. Like most opportunities, the mantle of leadership was simply thrust upon me.

"I learned through that experience that a position of leadership is a privilege, a responsibility, and an honor that should never be taken for granted or abused. Authentic leadership is not the result of having a job title or having a place on a formal organizational chart. It's what you do with that job title that matters. A leadership position must be earned, and it must be reearned every day. If we fail to earn it, it can be quickly taken away."

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of baseball, told me: "I was fifteen or sixteen and a student at Hotchless Prep School. One day the headmaster said to me, 'Fay, the boys will follow you and want to follow you, but you are not a leader.' No one had ever said that to me and it really hit me hard. From that point on, I started to think of myself as a leader."

Former Dodgers general manager E. J. "Buzzie" Bavasi spoke of his experiences: "I didn't realize I had any leadership ability until July 1944. I was in the infantry, a staff sergeant, and we had to take a hill called Monte Battaglia, which appropriately enough means 'Battle Mountain' in English. We needed the hill to establish an observation post overlooking the Po Valley. So we went up the hill with sixteen men, and we came back down with four. A young lieutenant ordered me to go back up the hill and bring back two machine guns. Well, we had absolutely no intention of going up that hill again. The machine guns were ruined, and we had lost a dozen men.

"I explained this to the lieutenant, but he insisted that we go, stating that the guns were worth twelve hundred dollars. I asked him for his home address. He asked why. I said, Til have my mother send you a check.' With that, the whole platoon was in an uproar. I then realized what it took to be a leader. The lieutenant may have had the rank to order us up that hill-but he didn't have the leadership ability. And we didn't go back up that hill."

Formal leadership is based on position, authority, and rank. A formal leader is usually empowered to control outcomes by distributing rewards (such as bonuses and incentive awards) and punishments (such as demotion or firing). A person who has the position and rank of a leader but lacks the abilities of a leader is a boss, not a leader. Bosses exercise control through fear, intimidation, and punishment. Bosses may be able to accomplish short-term goals, but over the long haul, they are not able to inspire the motivation and loyalty that produce a cohesive, successful team or organization.

Bosses push their people. They demand, order, threaten, and bully people to get results. Authentic leaders pull their people. They inspire, motivate, and draw people along in order to achieve results.

"The benefit of becoming a leader," Dr. John C. Maxwell told me, "is not that you will be able to tell people what to do. This is a misconception among adults as well as children. In reality, with leadership comes responsibility. The benefit of being a leader lies in being able to work with others, encouraging and equipping them, and together seeing something great achieved. Although we admire people who seem to be solo achievers-presidents, war heroes, inventors, athletes, and movie stars-the truth is that no individual has ever done anything of significant value on his or her own. Significant accomplishment always requires teamwork. And being a leader means working with a team. It is not easy to be a great leader, but only great leaders inspire great accomplishments."