Good Leaders Project Their Values and Passions

Leadership as easy and as hard as being true to yourself, taking risks

What is this thing we call leadership? That’s the question I was asked to decode for an audience of woman business owners last week. It’s a seemingly simple question that I have been pondering since sitting in my first office cubicle as a young policy analyst.

In my quest to answer the leadership question, prowling the shelves of airport bookstores has proved a great source of inspiration. Who can argue with leadership advice like listen more than you talk and set high standards for yourself? But none of the advice defined leadership. For example, lots of fantastic followers set high standards for themselves.

Then I came across a little gem in a book from management guru Peter Drucker. He says: “the definition of a leader, the only definition, is somebody who has followers.” I was a little perplexed. You don’t have to achieve results to be a leader? You don’t have to be a good person? You just have to have followers?

Mother Teresa has followers, she was a leader. Justin Trudeau has followers, he is a leader. Donald Trump has followers, he is a leader.

At around the same time, I was reading the biography of Steve Jobs. Parts of his story are very inspiring. He believed strongly in his vision that Apple products should be esthetically pleasing and easy to use. The company has been wildly successful as a result. He made all kinds of brave decisions that ran counter to popular opinion and what others felt he should do to champion his strong beliefs and high standards. Yet, to say he was hard on the people close to him is putting it mildly. I didn’t find anything in his leadership style with people that I would want to emulate. If having followers made Steve Jobs a leader, what is the commonality between Jobs, Trump and Mother Teresa that attracts those followers?

Here’s my theory: I think to attract followers (and therefore be a leader), you have to be authentic and willing to project your values and passion through your work. It’s not enough to just have values and passions. They have to be important enough that you will project them into the world in spite of what people might think. Trump may be a jerk but he’s an authentic jerk who is willing to project his values and passions to the public in spite of what people might say.

Leadership is that easy and that hard. Because to do that you have to stop worrying about what your parents or spouse or friends think you should want or think you should do. You have to stop thinking about appearances and neighbours and keeping up with the Joneses. You have to take risks. You have to be true to yourself and figure out how to stand up for what you believe in and express your energy in an authentic way. Leadership is that easy and that hard.

Advocating for small business owners has helped me develop as a leader. While local business owners are not as recognizable as people like Steve Jobs and Donald Trump, they are leaders. They have followers called customers and they certainly take risks most people aren’t prepared to take to project their passion into the world. Fighting for this courageous group of leaders has inspired me to take risks to fight bad public policy against terrible odds. It has also inspired creative work to champion good policy.

Not long ago a friend challenged me to come up with my leadership statement. My statement is simple: “I want to inspire others to work toward a mission that makes the world a better place. I want to lead with integrity, courage, fairness and passion.”

As I told the audience of Women in Biz Network last week, my friend’s challenge helped me realize the most important question a leader can work on is not, “What is leadership?” For that you need followers and a willingness to project your values and passions into the world. The more important question for leaders is a much more personal and practical question: What kind of leader do you want to be?

By Laura Jones

Laura Jones is Executive Vice President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. She can be reached at laura.jones@cfib.ca. Follow her on Twitter @CFIBideas.

TAN