10.10 Know that great leadership is generally not what it’s made out to be.
I don’t use the word “leadership” to describe what I do or what I think is good because I don’t believe that what most people think of as “good leadership” is effective. Most people think a good leader is a strong person who engenders confidence in others and motivates them to follow him/her, with the emphasis on “follow.” The stereotypical leader often sees questioning and disagreement as threatening and prefers people do what they’re told. As an extension of this paradigm, the leaders bears the main burden of decision making. But because such leaders are never as all-knowing as they try to appear, disenchantment and even anger tends to set in. That’s why people who once loved their charismatic leaders often want to get rid of them.
This traditional relationship between “leaders” and “followers” is the opposite of what I believe is needed to be most effective, and being maximally effective is the most important thing a “leader” must do. It is more practical to be honest about one’s uncertainties, mistakes, and weaknesses than to pretend they don’t exist. It is also more important to have good challengers than good followers. Thoughtful discussion and disagreement is practical because it stress-tests leaders and brings what they are missing to their attention.
One thing that leaders should not do, in my opinion, is be manipulative. Sometimes leaders will use emotions to motivate people to do things that they would not do after reflecting clearly. When dealing with intelligent people in an idea meritocracy, it is essential that one always appeal to their reason rather than their base emotions.
The most effective leaders work to 1) open-mindedly seek out the best answers and 2) bring others along as part of that discovery process. That is how learning and getting in sync occurs. A truly great leader is appropriately uncertain but well equipped to deal with that uncertainty through open-minded exploration. All else being equal, I think the kind of leader who looks and acts like a skilled ninja will beat the kind of leader who looks and acts like a muscular action hero every time.
a. Be weak and strong at the same time.
Sometimes asking questions to gain perspective can be misperceived as being weak and indecisive. Of course it’s not. It’s necessary in order to become wise and it is a prerequisite for being strong and decisive.
Always seek the advice of wise others and let those who are better than you take the lead. The objective is to have the best understanding to make the best possible leadership decisions. Be open-minded and assertive at the same time and get in tight sync with those who work with you, recognizing that sometimes not all or even the majority of people will agree with you.
b. Don’t worry about whether or not your people like you and don’t look to them to tell you what you should do.
Just worry about making the best decisions possible, recognizing that no matter what you do, most everyone will think you’re doing something—or many things—wrong. It is human nature for people to want you to believe their own opinions and to get angry at you if you don’t, even when they have no reason to believe that their opinions are good. So, if you’re leading well, you shouldn’t be surprised if people disagree with you. The important thing is for you to be logical and objective in assessing your probabilities of being right.
It is not illogical or arrogant to believe that you know better than the average person, so long as you are appropriately open-minded. In fact, it is not logical to believe that what the average person thinks is better than what you and the most insightful people around you think, because you have earned your way into your higher-than-average position and you and those insightful people are more informed than the average person. If the opposite were true, then you and the average man shouldn’t have your respective jobs. In other words, if you don’t have better insights than them, you shouldn’t be a leader—and if you do have better insights than them, don’t worry if you are doing unpopular things.
So how should you deal with your people? Your choices are either to ignore them (which will lead to resentment and your ignorance of what they are thinking), blindly do what they want (which wouldn’t be a good idea), or encourage them to bring their disagreements to the surface and work through them so openly and reasonably that everyone will recognize the relative merits of your thinking. Have the open disagreement and be happy to either win or lose the thought battles, as long as the best ideas win out. I believe that an idea meritocracy will not only produce better results than other systems but will also ensure more alignment behind appropriate yet unpopular decisions.
c. Don’t give orders and try to be followed; try to be understood and to understand others by getting in sync.
If you want to be followed, either for egotistical reasons or because you believe it more expedient to operate that way, you will pay a heavy price in the long run. When you are the only one thinking, the results will suffer.
Authoritarian managers don’t develop their subordinates, which means those who report to them stay dependent. This hurts everyone in the long run. If you give too many orders, people will likely resent them, and when you aren’t looking, defy them. The greatest influence you can have over intelligent people—and the greatest influence they will have on you—comes from constantly getting in sync about what is true and what is best so that you all want the same thing.
* Source: Principles by Ray Dalio