Qualities of a Leader

This post is a speech I wrote for a training at the food and beverage department daily briefing at Potawatomi Casino.

I decided to give a speech on the qualities of a great leader. There are a couple problems with that: I'm not a good speaker and I'm not a great leader. So I went to the great repository of information - the internet- and I googled, ‘leadership quotes’. As you can imagine I received about a gazillion quotes and some of them were actually from great leaders. Far too many were from people who wrote books.

But I read, and I sifted;  sorted, organized, categorized; and I came up with what I believe are the five qualities of a great leader; and they are: vision, confidence, trust, ownership, and humility.

I’ll take them each individually, give a couple closing remarks and hopefully we’ll be back to work in about 20 minutes.

Vision

“Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.”
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

In order to lead others you have to first know where you are going. You have to have a plan. Thomas Edison said, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Or, put another way, 'a visionary without a plan is just a dreamer.'"

So, you have to have vision, and you have to have a plan- but your plan has to be flexible because...

 “...the best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go astray.” -Robert Burns

Most all great leaders are workaholics- so plan on rising early and working late. The team is inspired by a leader who is found working when they arrive and is still working when they leave. It doesn’t hurt if you spend some time in the trenches either. Do the dirty work- peel the onions, bus the tables; park the cars. If you want the team to share your vision try sharing the work of the team.

Confidence

“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”
- Adlai Stevenson

Alexander the Great literally conquered the world by the time he was 30 years old. He inherited a great army from his father Philip, but no man in history ever led with such unabashed confidence. Alexander used to lead the cavalry charge and was always in the thick of the battle. His troops believed that he was indestructible and this gave them confidence in victory.

A confident leader can inspire even a person of mediocre talent to give excellent results, while an incompetent boss can demoralize even the best team. Confidence in the leader inspires confidence in the vision. Trust in the vision insures buy-in by the team; and no one can lead a cavalry charge without a cavalry.

Trust

“Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their ingenuity.”
-George S. Patton

No one likes a micro-manager: share the vision, share the plan; delegate responsibility and demand results. Reward efficiency and re-train when necessary. Most people respond best when they are given ownership of a project. Ownership begets pride.

Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher who is credited with the founding of Taoism said, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

If you cannot trust your team how on earth can you expect them to trust you?

Ownership

“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
- Winston Churchill

Harry S. Truman had a plaque on his desk, it said: ‘the buck stops here.’ Harry S. Truman was the man who ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan- effectively killing over 200,000 innocent people.

All leaders make decisions- great leaders make difficult decisions. You don’t always know if it’s the right one but sometimes you have to act- especially if no one else will.

Later in life Truman wrote to his friend Irv Kupcinet, a Chicago broadcaster, “I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war... I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again.” You see, ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures.’

Humility

“…let the greatest among you be as the youngest, and the leader as the servant.”
-Jesus Christ

There is perhaps no other figure in human history that has had the impact of this uneducated itinerant preacher from a backwater region in an insignificant little occupied country in a remote corner of the once dominant Roman Empire. He never wrote a book, he never held an office, but his impact on western civilization is incalculable and indesputable. He believed in a simple truth and because he refused to renounce his belief he was executed by the very best, brightest, and powerful people of his day.

Today, the Pope is the spiritual leader of over one billion Catholics. That’s more than half of all Christians and one sixth of the world’s population. He is referred to as, “The servant of the servants of God.”

Joseph Stalin was once advised that the Pope was unhappy with some of his policies. Stalin replied, “How many troops does the Pope have? God is on the side of the biggest battalions.” Well, the Pope has no army- unless you believe in angels-but Joseph Stalin is dead, the Soviet Empire is gone, but the Pope and the Catholic Church are still here. So maybe there’s something to be said for humility.

Conclusion

As I was finishing up this speech I did a little browsing through the sayings of Lao Tzu and I found something that really floored me. Two lines from the Tao Te Ching that effectively destroyed everything I had worked on for the last couple days:

“Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know.”

I nearly decided to quote those two lines and sit down. The message was pure: ‘If you want to be a leader, then find a parade, get out in front of it, and lead. Otherwise, get in the back.'

If there is one thing I learned from this project it’s that great leaders are forged in the fires of crisis. And I wondered who the great leaders are going be in the next year- because I think there’s a storm coming.  I know it’s not me; I’m not smart enough, but I’m ready to follow. So if you have a vision, show me the plan. If you can inspire confidence, if you trust me, I'll fight along side you. I'll make mistakes- so will you. But when the goal is accomplished we'll share the credit with the team. And we may just be able to get through this thing together.