a leadership primer (general ret. colin powell)

LESSON 1

"Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off."



Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, wich means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable, if your'e honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity:you'll avoid tough decisionds, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to beconfronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.
Ironically , by procrastinating on the different choices, by trying no to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally"nicely" regardless of thier contributions , you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative
and productive in the organization.

LESSON 2

"The day soldiers stop bringing you thier problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is failure of leadership."


If this were a litmus test, the majority of CEOs would fail. One , they build so many barriers to upward communication that the very idea of someone lower in the hierarchy looking up to the leader for help is ludicrous. Two, the corporate culture they foster often defines asking for help as weakness or failure, so people cover up thier gaps, and theorganization suffers accordingly. Real leaders make themselves acessible and available. They show concern for the efforts and challenges faced by underlings, even as they demand high standards. Accordingly, they are more likely to create an enviroment where problem anlysis replaces blame.

Lesson 3

"Dont be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as nicked by the real world."



Small companies and start-ups don't have the time for analytically detached experts. They dont have the money to subsidize lofty elites, either. The president answers the phone and drives the truck when necessary; everyone on the payroll visibly produces and contributes to the bottom-line results or they're history.But as companies get bigger, they often forget who "brought them to the dance" :things like all-hands involvement,egalitarianism,informality,market intimacy,daring,risk,speed,agility. Policies that emanate from ivory towers often have adverse impact on people out in the field who are fighting the wars or bringing in the revenues. Real leaders are vigilant , and combative, in the face of these trends.