What is Real Leadership?

What is Real Leadership?

I have had a chance to think about my leadership/management “style” a lot lately. I have been challenged about how I lead and what I do well and what I need to improve on. Mix that with some of my TV viewing and I get an interesting juxtaposition of thoughts.

I enjoy watching a couple different TV shows that talk about leadership – that may not be what they are aiming for, but it is what I watch them for – “Undercover Boss”, “Shark Tank” and Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” These are interesting when you watch and listen to what is going on. One of the main takeaways that I have noticed is that to be a good leader you really need to talk, and listen to your employees. You need to develop enough of a true relationship with your employees that they trust you enough to share the hard stuff with you. If there isn’t any trust, you may only get lip service, or they will only tell you what you want to hear, and suddenly you are going down roads that you shouldn’t be travelling.

I noticed how on the “Boss” sometimes the CEO is absolutely surprised at how “corporate” is making things so difficult for the rest of the employees, and they never knew it. They listened to their boards, or a select focus group, but never got down to the employees to see how these changes and policies were affecting the rest of the company. I have been struck by how often the employees have said that the reason they never spoke up about policies because “they never thought anyone cared.”

On “Shark Tank” and “Apprentice” I have been amazed at how much goes into building relationships to form trust for creating business partners, or teams for a task. There is a lot of communicating going on, and listening, and sharing expectations and understandings, and backgrounds. These are a lot of key components to developing high performing teams or companies.

My thoughts are mixed in that I have been told that I need to stop working on these “soft skills.” I have been told that these are areas without a lot of “real” impact. As I think about it, and observe the areas, I think that these are the areas that really help to improve the climate and culture of the work place. When these are in place, employees are more productive, more creative, more resourceful in finding ways around problems.  Seems to me that when companies ignore the relationship area of the workplace, that things go “south.” Why would you want to ignore them and harm your business?  Strictly focusing on the hard skills and the things that can be measured, leave you vulnerable to missing the boat on some great innovations and great team members that can help grow the business over the long term.

Thoughts?