Quitter

Leadership, like vision, is often a very underrated. Leadership is one of those personality traits that you can't often put your finger on -- but often, you can tell when it's lacking. Perhaps the difficulty arises because leadership is not tied to anything else in a personality. You could be an intellectual giant, and a horrible leader. You could be the friendliest, most congenial person ever, always able to start up a conversation with complete strangers -- and still be a horrific leader.

Of course, there are also different ways to lead. The phrase "lead by example" should be familiar to everyone, and while that conveys a very successful leadership style, it's not definitive. There have been many "great leaders" who didn't necessarily follow their own rules, but were still great leaders.

I've seen my share of leaders; anyone who starts and/or runs their business is a leader, whether they like it or not. Leaders can also exist at all levels of an organization, not just the top; a project manager, technical lead, engineering manager, or even just a sales person.

I've run into some great examples of how not to lead.

We can immediately discount the poor leaders who primarily suffered poor vision. Without vision, you're not going anywhere, and it's really hard to lead without direction. That covers experiences I had with at least six of the companies I worked for (BravoCom, CharlieNet, IndiaTech, Juliet.net, KiloByte, and Mike Corp).

So what's one of the first failings of a leader? Not accepting the role. If you are to be a leader, you must accept that you are a leader, and then act that way. Half of being an 'industry leader', near as I can tell, is simply acting like you are one.

So you can imagine how horrified I was at one engineering meeting when the CTO of LimaCom, when asked about our choice of core technology by a customer, told them, "Well, you would know best in that area." Bad CTO, no cookie! You never tell a customer that they know better than you -- at least, not if you expect to sell them anything. After all, why should they buy your product if you admit they'd be better off doing it themselves?

Leaders are expected to make the best of what they have -- or to work out a solution to any problems that come up. When talking about people, this is extra important. I still remember on day in 1998, working for CharlieNet, when the engineering manager called me into his office to chat. I was the first engineer he'd hired, himself having come on board a year or so after the company had gotten going, and already had about a half dozen engineers under his "command". The engineers I worked with there, while they were fairly in need of management, were all extremely talented, and damn near brilliant.

"What do you think of the rest of the team?" he asked me. I told him I thought they were a great bunch. "I don't trust any of them," he replied.

I was shocked, for so many reasons. I was shocked because anyone who had actually bothered to talk with these people would realize they were wizardly. I was shocked because he didn't trust his own team. I was particularly shocked because he actually told me outright. Given that these were the people who made the company actually work, why this guy felt he couldn't trust the existing software development team is a mystery I've yet to solve.

Of course, he let this affect his leadership. Not only because I, for one, couldn't take him seriously anymore, but he would "handle" the problem by simply avoiding talking to anyone on the team. He gave these engineers no direction, and then wondered why they weren't being as productive as they could be. Ultimately, he was "promoted out of the way," bumped up to a director-level position (which lasted for about two months, before he left of his own accord).

I could dovetail in here a point about how worthless it is to figure out interesting ways to get people "out of the way" and not simply getting rid of them, but I've seen this happen in a number of places, and it deserves a chapter of its own.

If it sounds like I'm leaning towards saying leadership involves some degree of lying, you're right. While I much enjoy my brutally honest lifestyle, there are several times you should go with the "little white lie", and occasionally, go full-out with the total "lie through your teeth" play. However, I still feel you should be brutally honest when at all possible.

If you think one of your employees is "on the fence", be honest with them, tell them you're not happy with their performance, see if they have a reason, or if they can help with a solution. Perhaps they're struggling because of some unseen force (perhaps they feel beholden to two bosses, and shouldn't be, but you don't know who else is wielding the boss hammer with them). Ultimately, if they can't pull it together, part ways later, without it being a surprise.

When you're talking to a customer, an investor, or anyone else who is going to be looking to you as a leader, confidence is sometimes better than brutal honesty. When you're selling a hardware appliance, and the customer asks you what operating system you're using, tell them it's a hardened, customized operating system specifically tuned for the application. Don't tell them it's Linux, especially if they're a Windows shop. The real answer, of course, is "it doesn't matter, it's an appliance," but at least by telling them it's a custom system, you convey the sense that you've got a technology they can't reproduce easily, and you avoid the question.

Real leaders will know when the time is right to tell the truth, lie a little, and lie a lot.