Leadership And Fake Boobs

Leadership is an Attitude. Management is a position. Leadership is NOT exclusive to the workplace. A parent is as much a leader as a CEO - perhaps better.

Stop thinking that leadership is a mere list of traits that you simply check off. A leader has only ONE responsibility: to lead. How he or she leads really doesn't matter. If a leader leads poorly, the followers will choose to follow someone else. If the leader leads well, the followers continue to follow. That's why they're called followers - because they follow. And you're only a leader if people are following. You can't force them to follow you. Authentic leaders understand that. Artificial leaders (those who think that by reading a book or attending a course that they can now call themselves leaders) don't get that.

Artificial leaders are the "fake boobs" of the corporate world. Just like some women say that implants make them feel better about themselves, getting a certificate from a leadership course makes some people feel better about themselves too. But in both cases, there is a difference between authentic and artificial. They look real but you know they're not - you just don't say anything.

Leadership is not management nor is it power, nor control, nor affluence. Who gets chosen to lead is based on the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of followers who believe that the leader they are following is the best person to lead them to where they want to go.

There are no irrefutable laws to leadership. Everything is refutable. Everything is questionable. Anyone who says different is asking you to blindly follow - which means you are not leading.

There is no explaining why some people are chosen leaders and some are not. Osama Bin Laden is a leader, as was Hitler, Charles Manson, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Buddha. Leaders are not defined by their ability to make the world a better place necessarily. Leaders are defined by having followers - good or bad. Period.

There are 350,000 books on Amazon on "leadership." That means there are 350,000 varying opinions on what leadership is. Not much wonder you can't define it. But you so desperately want to be seen as a leader because you've been convinced that "following" is for the weak. Well maybe you are weak, too weak to acknowledge your weakness. You don't become a leader by self-anointing. Leadership is not a diploma or certificate of course completion. Leadership not something you get in exchange for money. And there is no certification necessary to offer leadership courses.

Want to be a leader? Start saying "no" to the whole idea that leadership is something that you can buy. If you have to take courses, read books and convince others you're a leader, then you're probably not.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: What's my definition of leadership? I define it as the biggest time-waster in Corporate America today. It wastes more time and money, sucks more resources and makes more people pompous in their search to be on top than any other single item in the corporate world - and only because you've been led to believe that you have to be at the front - the winner.

The truth is, people recognize authentic leadership when they see it - they just can't explain it - in the same way one hundred people would be challenged to come to consensus in describing the same sunset.

Trying to convince people that by simply following a few rules makes you a leader is perhaps the biggest thing wrong with Corporate North America today. That is not authentic leadership. That's artificial leadership - a fake, a sham, a lie. Leadership is not something you achieve - it is an Attitude.
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The Act of Leadership

Question posed yesterday: What do actors and leaders have in common?

I don't think that acting and leadership have a single thing in common. Actors spend their lives being other people. Leaders spend their lives fine-tuning themselves.

Leadership is not something you DO. Acting IS something you do. Management is something you do. Politics is something you do. Blogging is something you do and you do NOT have to be a leader to do any of them.

Leadership is NOT something you do. It is something that you "BE."

Management school is not leadership school. Acting school is not leadership school. These schools may sharpen your skill set but they do not make you a leader. Can leaders be great actors? Of course. But that doesn't automatically mean that actors can be leaders.

We all have to stop thinking that Leadership is something we can attain in a week-long course or by reading a book. That's a load of crap. Without addressing context (deep-seated opinions, beliefs, values - the way you view the world) in a course, you are not going to become a leader.

John Maxwell's "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" is fundamentally wrong. His book teaches some new-age North American leadership culture as though if you simply do all of the 21 things in his book, you too will be a leader. That's pure bunk. Leadership can be learned but not by simply following 21 "laws." Maxwell has made a huge promise that if you follow the "laws" (and don't question them - remember they're irrefutable) in his book, you can become a leader. That is simply not true.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: We have muddied the waters in recent years by equating leadership with holding a top position in an organization. Leadership is not a position. Leadership is not something you do.

Leadership is a state of being, a state of mind, an Attitude. It is not the accomplishment of a series of tasks. It is not a passing grade at some course. It is not a title. It is not something you achieve. It is a way you exist. It is how you carry yourself. It is how you choose to walk the Earth.

Don't compare actors and leaders. It's like saying leadership is just acting. What an insult to genuine leaders. Leadership is a life-long pursuit - a work in progress. Everything else is a title.

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