Ian M Rountree

Project Manager, Copywriter, Digital Marketer

Rethinking Leadership

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Cemetary in Copenhagen - FlickrSome leaders are great because we mesh with them on a personal level. Some are great because they generate momentum for their cause. Still others are great because they advance the very paradigm under which their industry operates.

Which of these leaders is hard and fast the best?

Good leaders deliver a power that is impossible to fake. Those they lead are enhanced with every interaction, feel the investment of time and energy from the leaders, and become forces of nature. Good leaders invite Discipleship, and make of their followers Apostles – envoys of empowerment and personal effectiveness.

Can thought leaders do this?

Not alone. We bandy about the term Thought Leader pretty freely – but I’ve grown concerned that because so many people are becoming thought leaders (not inherently a bad thing), finite, measurable leadership is being slowly forgotten. Conceptually, leadership will always have huge merit – but the direct skills needed to lead individuals, or groups, still require a certain personal attention. You can’t learn to really lead without having had a great leader to learn from.

Leadership is important. We should be sharing our leaders with others.

There are some things we can only learn from direct Discipleship – studying under the masters, and finding out how they not only ship their ideals and their work, but how they deliver consistent excellence. Some things, in the same way, we can learn best from indirect study – the way we do when contemplating the work of real thought leaders like Kierkegaard, Tacitus, the Stoics – just to name a few.

So I’ll pass it back to you – who are your great leaders? Those you’ve worked with, or perhaps studied under? Philosophical leaders, direct report managers, executives – tell us all what influence they’ve been on you.

Start now. Recognize your leaders. Here, or elsewhere. Let’s learn together.

Image by Better than Bacon.

The Automated Prejudice of Scale

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Real Big FishHow do you approach big problems? You know, the ones you feel – at first glimpse – can never be solved? After you ge over the shock, how do you go about tearing down the mountain? On the other hand, what do you do when confronted with a big project at work? Perhaps liaising with a Fortune 100 company at the C-level to get a contract? Do you treat it differently than working with a local entrepreneur?

Of course you do. You have to. Don’t you?

Apparently, Berkeley High might be cutting out its science labs in order that the massive ethnic gap in its students grades might be levelled. I think these teachers are missing something. The move comes with the aim of diverting resources toward helping “underachieving” students get up to snuff; their studies say that black and latino students are doing poorly, and the science labs only benefit white students. I can’t help but wonder if this is an indication of educational idiocy, or if they’re playing to their audience. It’s hard to tell until the work gets done.

But we’re used to bureaucracy doing this sort of thing. It feels external. Often, we’re unaware of treating things differently because of size, because the prejudice is so ingrained it’s mental furniture. If you go shopping for a TV, you probably want a big one, the biggest you can afford, right? Who cares that if you’re sitting six feet away, a 37″ screen is just on the high end of useful for viewing – that 60″ plasma just screams take me home.

It doesn’t always work in a good or productive manner, but we tend to treat anything bigger than our estimates as better when it’s a perceived benefit, and worse when it’s a perceived threat. I should know – I’m 6’2″ tall and fairly large. My friends treat me as localized security, because without more than five seconds exposure (I’m the goofiest person I know, most days) on the face of it, I look big and threatening. Useful? No. Clothes cost half again as much as they do for anyone else, I hit my head on everything including some doorframes depending on my shoes, and I’m vastly out of shape. Still think being 6’2″ and having a football player’s frame is better than whatever shape you’re in?

As a proving converse argument, I had a friend in school who was 5’10” tall and less than a hundred pounds – and still more threatening than me. Is scale still impressive, putting these descriptions side by side?

One of the things we need to be able to do to combat these clouding assumptions is change our paradigm away from immediate impression toward utility. Often these are one and the same, but in the ever-more-convoluted twenty-first century, we can no longer afford to let first impressions count for anything if we’re given evidence the impression was imperfect. Minds are like parachutes, they work better when we let them open.

Another thing we need to get better at is making sure we’re aware of where scale is of any benefit. I’ve got less than three hundred people following me on Twitter, for example, but those I’ve connected with (and if you’re reading this, it’s likely you’re one of them and know where to find me there) are awesome people, well worth following – and well worth promoting on my part as well. Does this make my stream less valuable to the world than @Scobleizer‘s constant ReTweet storms?

If the small fish is connected to the right big fish, does the small fish need to grow?

Photo by jurvetson

How to Prove Your Leadership Means Nothing

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If the best way to make someone else look bad is to make yourself look good, what’s the best way to make yourself look bad? A lot of people would argue that it’s to prove your a phoney somehow, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s not quite the most effective way to self-sabotage.

The worst thing you can possibly do as a leader – in whatever arena you lead – is walk away. Once you’ve taken up the mantle of tribe leader, and all of the privileges and responsibilities that go with that, it doesn’t matter any longer how big or small the tribe itself is. When you’re the leader, the entire breath of the tribe comes from how you interact with it. How you encourage its growth. If you step off – even if you nominate a new leader, or one steps in – the burning of that bridge will invariably spread further than you expect.

Part of this is because any kind of leadership is public. Your tribemates are members of other tribes, and rest assured, they’ll tell these other groups exactly how you behaved as a leader. It also affects those to whom you were spokesperson for your group. As the leader, you’re the face of the group, and when you walk away, these other groups will see that and start asking questions. They’ll never get the real answers – your followers won’t tell your story for you any more accurately for your disappearance, if they tell it at all. And in this case, respectful silence has no benefit. It leads to speculation in the opposition, and speculation is never a good sign.

How you quit does matter. Moving on is not the same as walking away – finding a better purpose, dissolving a group which has accomplished its task, these are all valid reasons, and there are more. What makes the difference between the end of a task and abandonment is timing and disclosure. If it’s well known that you’re finishing your term at a given time, or that the task will take a specified period, that’s cool. In some instances it may even drive people harder and make them happier with you as a leader – assuming you stand up to your promises as laid out.

Quitting is worse. It’s the most absolute self-sabotage. Having a leader quit tends to make people feel as though they’ve been led on, that there was never any end in sight, or that any goals that you introduced meant nothing and all of their work was meaningless as well.

Why, if you’re going to quit, you may as well just