Thank goodness the English language has different words for Visionary, Manager, and Leader. Any conversation about one of these often blurs into another, but each term does have a different meaning. Leadership is almost always subjective, cryptic, and ambiguous, so there is value in demystifying it.

Govern Yourself

The first step on the path to good leadership is leading yourself. You must be solid with your Leadership Why, healthy self-confidence, and healthy humility. You must be at peace with your mistakes and shortcomings. You must bring a passion for your work that is contagious to your ensemble.

Govern the Work

The second step is leading the work. Your ensemble’s purpose is bigger than you and bigger than the ensemble itself. You must be able to prioritize and reconcile what your ensemble will not do. You must combat ambiguity and aim for explicitness, traceability, accountability, simplicity, and transparency.

Govern Others

Your third step is to lead others. As a good leader, you must possess healthy awareness of your ensemble’s strengths, weaknesses, advantages, and disadvantages. You are not hypocritical. You follow your own rules. You foster all four dimensions of trust (competence, integrity, dependability, and benevolence) within your team. You exercise good judgment on how close to be to each piece of work, whether to lead with a light touch or with a heavy hand. You demonstrate empathy for every team member since each of them have their own challenging life journey. You intensely want to bring out the best in everyone.

Elevate Others

Finally, you elevate others. You play host, teacher, and cheerleader. You even maximize others’ value when leading from a position of weakness. You have a positive influence when out of power, knowing that the ensemble needs to succeed on someone else’s terms instead of your own terms. You know the difference between being diminished and being a doormat. You know when your team is best served when you set the table versus bang the table.

Hyperbole makes eyes roll, but leadership is everything. Some loud microphones in this world want you to think this world has followership problems. Puh-leeze. Every one of the world’s big problems - misery, suffering, bankruptcy of the body, mind, and soul - are rooted in poor and false leadership. Every one of the world’s successes is enabled by a leader who intensely and ruthlessly pursued fulfilling, happy opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for their ensemble.

A poor methodology results in failed projects, lost jobs, and ruined relationships. A good methodology results in successful projects, fulfilling jobs, and constructive relationships.