The Secret to Being a Great Leader

A recipe for successful leadership.

leadership

I’ve always been interested in leadership. Ever since primary school. I’ve been fortunate enough to be given many opportunities to serve in leadership positions, be it in the Student Council in my secondary school or in clubs and societies at NUS (National University of Singapore).

In all these years, I’ve learnt a lot about what makes a great leader.

I think at the heart of leadership lies a simple formula:

Leadership = Character + Communication.

Simple enough?

Well, it actually is.

Except that character and communication are difficult to practice in themselves.

Character

When I say practice “character”, I mean actually walking the talk. All of us (hopefully) agree that honesty is important but how many of us actually abide by that principle? When was the last time you said you were busy to make it for something when you actually just didn’t want to go? When was the last time you said you would do something, but didn’t end up doing it?

I think character can be broken down into 2 separate factors: honesty and integrity. Honesty is just saying what actually happened, or how you actually think about something. Integrity is doing what you said you would do, keeping your promises — to yourself and others.

The easiest and fastest way to lose all your integrity is by talking behind someone’s back about something that you wouldn’t say to their face. So, if you have something to say to someone, say it directly to them.

A simple test to decide whether or not you should say something is Socrates’ triple filter test. It basically says that before you say anything, ask yourself the following 3 questions:

1. Is it true? (Or are you just passing around information that you heard from someone else, i.e., gossiping?)
2. Is it good? That is, do you think the other person would be happy to hear this?
3. Is it useful? That is, do you think this helps the other person in any way?

If you fail all the 3 questions, it’s best not to say anything at all. (Though sometimes, even if it is true and useful but not good, you should say it — depends on the context).

In the short term, honesty and integrity might lead to a lot of conflict. People might get mad at you, or fight with you. But, eventually they will come to respect you for being upfront about things.

Oftentimes, people think it’s kind to lie to someone so that the other person’s feelings aren’t hurt. I don’t think that’s a very kind to thing to do. I think it’s kinder to the the person to be told the truth, which they later realise anyway, as it at least shows you respect and trust them enough to take it the right way. There’s nothing noble or kind about deceiving someone in order to protect their feelings. I think that’s just an excuse to avoid having a difficult conversation that might result in a fight (or them disliking you) — which makes it a selfish, not selfless, act.

Look, don’t get me wrong. There’s no need to be “brutally honest” about everything and go around making people mad just to say what you think.

If you get a sweater for Christmas from your Aunt and she asks you whether you like it or not, I don’t think you need to tell her “It’s the ugliest sweater I’ve ever seen.” You can always say how you actually feel — that you really appreciate the gesture and that you’re very grateful for it (without any mention about whether or not you like the sweater).

But at least, if asked a question point-blank, don’t lie about it.

The key idea behind the formula of leadership is that no matter how good your communication skills are, without character, words mean nothing. Talk is cheap. Why should anyone believe what you say? Anyone can fake niceties for their own selfish interests.

Communication

On the other hand, a good character is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to make a good leader. To be able to win the trust of others, you need to be able to effectively communicate with them.

Let me be clear: effective communication doesn’t mean using fancy words or being extremely eloquent. In fact, that’s a very small part of communication. We often forget that communication isn’t just about speaking, it’s about listening (I’d even argue that listening is more important than speaking).

So, effective communication isn’t about being able to convince other people by speaking effectively or being manipulative. If you have dubious intentions, people will figure them out eventually. The only way to have a sustainable impact on people is through a genuine expression of empathy and respect.

The best leaders I’ve seen so far wait for everyone to finish making their points, before they make their own. This way, everybody feels valued, and treated like an equal. It sounds quite easy to wait until everyone is done speaking but in reality, it actually isn’t. It takes great self-restraint to stop yourself from saying what you have to, and patiently listening to others.

Another simple idea to remember is this:

It’s not what you say that matters, it’s how they feel.

People might forget what you said or did, but never how you made them feel.

Leadership in Practice

Let’s understand all of this with an example: imagine you’ve to give feedback to someone (say, John) about their performance. It’s your responsibility to help John grow and become better by giving him accurate feedback. At the same time, you know that John is known to get defensive quite easily and doesn’t like when others point out his mistakes. What do you do?

Well, firstly, it helps to have a high-trust relationship with John before you give him the feedback. If he doesn’t trust that you have his best interests at heart and you genuinely want him to improve, nothing you say to him is going to matter.

Secondly, it matters how you give the feedback. Obviously, it’s not a very pleasant experience for John (or even you) so it’s necessary to try and make it as comforting as possible, while saying what you need to. Start off by asking him how he thinks he is doing — more often that not, people know their own strengths and weaknesses and they might have reasons for not doing as well as you were hoping (e.g. something else might be going on in his life that could be affecting his performance). Give him a chance to reflect on his own performance before you give your opinion/feedback.

When you start speaking, give him credit for everything he has done well, and how much he has learnt. Then (and only then), you can tell him about some things he can improve on (this is the part where you have to be most careful — use the right words). Using words like “weakness” is usually not a good idea as it indirectly implies that one’s abilities are static, thereby subscribing to the notion of “fixed mindset”. Instead, use words like “progress” and “improvement” to indicate that you have faith that he can do better by working harder.

At the end of the day, it’s not just the feedback that matters. What matters more is how the receiver (John, in this case) take the feedback and what future actions he plans to take. Does he feel more motivated or demoralized? Is the relationship between the two people stronger or weaker than it was before?

If you give the “right” feedback in the wrong manner, it does no good (it might actually cause harm to your relationship).

So, in summary, you may be dead right about something but you will never be able to have an impact on someone or help them see things differently if they don’t trust you, or they’re not willing to listen to you, or they think you’re duplicitous or malevolent or vain.

Tldr; leaders become great when trust and integrity surround their character, and they’re able to effectively communicate that to others in order to make an impact.

John Maxwell put it quite nicely,

“All things being equal, people do business with people they like. All things not being equal, they still do.”