GreenSearch Motivating: Leadership - What It Is and What It Takes

Published March 20, 2000

In our line of work, we meet a number of interesting and informative people. We interact with small business owners and in many cases the nature of our assignment gives us an opportunity to observe how they provide leadership to the enterprises to which they have made an enormous commitment. Clearly, many of them make all the right moves as it relates to the text book definition of what leadership is all about. For some it has been a positive learning experience. For others it has been a painful journey of lessons learned the hard way and paid for with dollars that should have been booked as profits. Leadership is an important subject and from time to time it's a good idea to review some of its important principles.

We dug into the mighty GreenSearch library and pulled out some reference material dealing with the subject of leadership and here are some thoughts. First of all, we believe that leaders are made, and not necessarily born. Harry Levinson and Stuart Rosenthal, both psychiatric experts, state that, "Our point of view is that some leaders want to be leaders and see themselves as leaders. Others rise to the occasion. In either case they see what has to be done and do it. They provide stability and support while defining goals and providing reassurance. Sometimes they become leaders when they become angry about something, catch fire and start to lead. Managers become leaders when they learn to take a stand, to take risks, to anticipate, initiate and innovate." These are provocative words and should give us some food for thought.

The more we study successful leaders, the more we see that there are certain common practices that they seem to apply in a universal manner. Successful leaders are unwilling to accept the status quo. They are never comfortable sitting by and having fate determine their course of action. Instead, they chose to be pioneers and innovators. They always have their ears to the ground for good ideas and have an uncanny ability to apply the best ones in a successful manner. They are willing to take the risk of a good idea failing. Why, because that's one of the ways good leaders learn.

Another common trait among leaders is their ability to inspire others by means of defining a clear vision for people of what might be. To use one of Stephen Covey's principles of personal leadership, "They begin with the end in mind." What's more, they encourage others to become a part of that vision. They express themselves in terms that their followers know and understand, and they do it with enthusiasm.

Leaders also have a realistic sense of themselves. They realize that what they envision cannot be done without the help of others. Therefore, they are also particularly good at enabling others to act. Said another way, they enlist the help of all those who will make their vision a reality.

Good leaders also have a sense that people need models and plans to help them get there. They not only have to demonstrate a verbal commitment to their vision, but they also have to practice what they preach. In other words, they have to be role models for their people.

The implementation of a shared vision is often a long and arduous journey. There are set backs and failures along the way. It is precisely at these lowest moments that people need to be encouraged to go on. This is called encouraging the heart. The tough part of this is that many times leaders themselves become discouraged. The good ones overcome these feelings and spend their time encouraging their folks to succeed. It is this practice that really separates good leaders from great leaders.

No discussion of leadership would be complete without a brief review of the characteristics that followers most admire in their leaders. James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, Directors at the Leavey School of Business and Administration at Santa Clara University, outlined these characteristics in their book, The Leadership Challenge How to Get Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. Over 2600 top-level mangers completed a checklist of superior leadership characteristics. The top 20 are listed below in order of importance:

1. Honest	11. Supportive
2. Competent	12. Courageous
3. Forward Looking	13. Caring
4. Inspiring	14. Cooperative
5. Intelligent	15. Mature
6. Fair-Minded	16. Ambitious
7. Broad-Minded	17. Determined
8. Straightforward	18. Self-Controlled
9. Imaginative	19. Loyal
10. Dependable	20. Independent

One of the key elements of this characteristic list is that when asked how they measured these characteristics in their leaders, the respondents replied that they observed them in the behaviors of their leaders.

In one of the final chapters of their book, Kouzes and Posner discuss some of the down sides of leadership. "It is fun to be a leader, gratifying to have influence and exhilarating to have scores of people cheering your every word. It is empowering to set directions and have people fired up to march at your command. In more subtle ways than you would like to admit, you can be seduced by your own power and importance. All evil leaders have been infected with the disease of hubris. They have become bloated with an exaggerated sense of self. They have used the gifts of leadership to pursue their own sinister ends. Leadership practices are amoral. But leaders, the men and women who use the practices, are moral or immoral. There is an ethical dimension to this discussion of leadership that cannot be ignored or taken lightly, by the leader or follower."

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The above article was developed by GreenSearch which provides key management search, web-based job posting and management consulting services to the green industry and allied trades nationwide.

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