Recently a leader asked me what I think about business ethics. I tried to be engaging rather than cheeky, but my first response was that there are none. Ethics are ethics (you’ve heard that before, right?). He was confused and then proceeded to explain how very wrong I was. It didn’t hurt my feelings… Understanding other people‘s opinions is one of my favorite things to do. (Occasionally it even changes my stubborn mind) But this time, I mostly still agree with myself.
It might seem bizarre, but it got me thinking. I propose that there’s only one kind of leadership as well. I imagine that many of the authors of the more than 60,000 leadership titles on Amazon alone would disagree.
Leadership really boils down to one thing: taking good care of people. If leadership is just dragging people across the finish line, there are methods… but I’m pretty sure many of them are illegal.
There are 1,000 good ways to lead — and certainly many more bad ways to lead — but the point of all of it is the same:
There is a place that we need to be.
There is a group of people that I’ve been chosen to lead there.
How can I inspire and support the people I lead to do the things that must be done?
In people-facing work, everyone has to bring their best selves every day. Humans are so very human that this is not always possible. Sometimes we need each other to pull us back to reality. I had an employee who took incredible ownership of her role. While she did not have an official leadership title, there were several people that answered to her position. In her own fierce, but supportive way, she demanded a lot of them. The other staff joked that when they got out out of line, she would take them to “her office” for an earful. She would pull them into an echoey staff-only stairwell and help them take stock of themselves. She would directly but kindly share the team’s concerns. She would listen to their defensiveness or pain and frustration. She would offer a tissue. She would listen again.
You might need to have seen her office to realize how much her methods were unique. They weren’t the tactics that I would’ve chosen in my leadership style. They wouldn’t have worked with everyone. But none of that mattered. Even when it seemed to temporarily damage her popularity with her team, every day she chose to prioritize our work and our team in ways that sometimes felt uncomfortable to her and to them. Sometimes I had to soothe her tears in my office afterward, because leadership actions can be painful and lonely. But it worked. She was one of my most important leaders. She helped the team stay (mostly) sane on days that might have been much more difficult.
AI is advancing, right? If robots could do everything, there would be no need for leadership. While there are different stages and groups and responsibilities in leadership, there’s only one kind of good leadership: the kind that’s about taking good care of people.
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