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Don't be this guy (© Office Space)

I was recently asked to give a talk on leadership at work and decided to put together some points that I felt were practical and realistic, and would like to share them here with you too.

1. The more you give, the more you grow

It is a mistake to think that hoarding information is a good long-term strategy to becoming better. A much better strategy to is to teach others everything that you know, for one simple reason: by doing that you create a void in yourself that you then feel encouraged to fill with some new piece of knowledge. So not only have you done others a service by hopefully teaching them something new, but you have also inadvertently helped yourself grow. I didn’t come up with this metaphor, Paul Arden did in his excellent book “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be”.

I’ve noticed that hoarding information tends to usually be a defense mechanism used by people who may feel threatened or insecure at work. Yet even in those situations, I don’t see why anyone needs to be threatened. If you’re good at what you do then why feel threatened? There’s nothing wrong with someone else in the department having the ability or knowledge to do the things that you’re doing, nor is there anything wrong with them being better at doing those things.

As long as you know that you’re good and those around you know that you’re good, then such positive competition will only be constructive to everyone. If the work environment is such that everyone is preying on everyone else and withholding knowledge is the only way to survive then you probably don’t want to be working there in the first place.

2. Don’t wait to get promoted in order to lead

Leadership ability is not tied to one’s job title. One doesn’t have to be a supervisor to be a good leader, and by the same token, a VP isn’t necessarily a better leader than a manager. Whether innate or acquired, leadership simply does not require a job title to manifest itself; one may be a good leader despite of one’s job title, not because of it.

Leading should not be considered a distant aspiration that requires some prerequisite that is out of your control to first occur; it is a trait that one can instantly activate. Be proactive; don’t wait for things to happen.

3. A good leader inspires

The best way to describe the right leadership style is to contrast it with two bad styles:

• Inspiration vs manipulation: A manipulative person never gives subordinates the full picture: he or she always conceals information from them and is seldom honest with them. Such a person wrongly assumes that this kind of behavior gives him or her more flexibility and freedom in making decisions.
• Inspiration vs master/slave relationship: There are some people who never actually teach you anything; you simply never learn anything from them. If you have a problem, they will fix it for you, but they will never teach you how to fix it yourself, so the next time you’re faced with the same problem or with the same type of problem, you are forced to go back to them for help. Such leaders gain their sense of worth by making others depend on them. One of the fundamental principles of engineering is to avoid single points of failure, so imagine, how risky it is to have such people in the work environment.

The correct style is therefore to teach people how to do things for themselves by teaching them how to think for themselves. For everything else, there’s Google.

4. A good leader isn’t afraid of asking questions

There’s no shame in not knowing. Trust me, guys. Richard Feynman, who was an esteemed physicist, Nobel Laureate, and overall great guy once said that his answer to most questions that his students ask him is “I don’t know”. How about that. Saying “I don’t know, let me look into it and get back to you” when you don’t know makes people respect you more because it shows that you’re an open-minded, down-to-earth person who is willing to learn and grow.

Of course, there has to be a limit to how many times you can bluntly say that. If you’re the Team-Lead and every time someone ask you a question you reply with “I don’t know”, they’ll think that you’re an imbecile. There are ways that you can get around that, such as creating space, i.e. telling someone to check back with you in 2 hours and then thinking about the problem during that time.

Don’t come across as a pretentious, know-it-all prima donna; no one will like you, not even other prima donnas.

5. “Nice guys” make bad leaders

Statistically, when a person gets promoted, there will always be a subset of employees who will not be happy about that, either because of jealousy or uncertainty or both. If that person happens to be a tough, no-nonsense person, then he or she will be able to quell those resentments fairly quickly. He or she might not be liked for it, but ultimately, things will get done on time.

Imagine though if the person is a “nice guy”. He or she will mistakenly believe that being hippy-like will make everyone love each other and pull together to get things done on time. That usually doesn’t happen. What will actually happen is that the nice guy’s authority will be undermined, nothing will get done on time and then he or she will quickly realize that the only way to get things done is to either resign, be demoted or turn into a jerk and start bossing everyone around. Neither option is ideal.

Therefore, it is important to know when to be tough and when to be lenient, when to be the boss and when to be a peer: it is a mistake thinking that you can get away with being just one or the other. Remember that leaders are respected, but not necessarily liked. Your job is to get things done while making sure that your colleagues grow, professionally, during the process.

6. Dress appropriately, others will respect you more

We all tend to be judgmental creatures, and we each have preconceived notions of what certain people are expected to look like. And so we have to feed into those stereotypes by making sure that we look the part when in a leadership position. We’re not in the business of changing societies’ perceptions. Well, maybe we are in a way, but I mean not in a ‘Hasta la victoria siempre’ type of way.

People will size you up based on how you look and making the right impression is always important.  A lot of the time, it doesn’t matter how much you actually know; all that matters is how good people think you are. Attire and presentation have a lot to do with that.  Take it from someone who makes absolutely no effort to look good.

7. Good leaders put the well-being of their subordinates ahead of their own

Belittling people and making it a point to tell them off in public might do wonders for one’s ego, but it is a very short-term way of thinking; no one will want to ever work with you and if they do, it will be out of compulsion or fear. And if your followers aren’t willingly following you then you’re not actually a leader. Recall the age-old axiom “Praise in public, correct in private”. Though that advice isn’t applicable in all cases, it is in most.

Part of a leader’s job is to ensure that his or her subordinates become better at what they do while shielding them from the spears and arrows of corporate irrationality. One’s ego shouldn’t have a place in it all.

8. If you’re good, people will sense it; there’s no need to actually tell them

Much like modesty, if you have to tell people how modest you are then you aren’t really that modest. In like manner, if you have to keep telling people what a great leader you are, chances are, you’re a pretty lousy one.

Tags: better at workplace, leadership, self improvement
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