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Leading Companies Online Magazine
Nobody's Perfect, Not Even Leaders
By Ray Smilor, Beyster Institute Executive Director
 Leadership is a hot topic today. Books and magazine articles hold up leaders for emulation. Movies and TV shows showcase the exploits of leaders. MBA programs offer leadership courses. Training firms offer a range of programs to enhance one’s leadership skills. And organizations from the Marines to companies like General Electric present their own brands of leadership development.
With all this emphasis on leaders and leadership, it’s easy to get the impression that a leader is some kind of superhuman being, a perfect combination of drive, attitude, personality, and goodness. Thinking of a leader in this regard makes it rather daunting to put ourselves in a leadership role. How can we measure up to this type of organizational Spiderman?
I think it’s important to approach leadership — and our roles as leaders — differently. Think of someone that you believe is a really outstanding leader. Not someone abstract or historical, like Lincoln, but rather someone whom you know personally, someone who in your own experience you have willingly followed. This should be a person who has genuinely impressed you with his or her leadership abilities.
Now, on the left hand side of a piece of paper, list the qualities, attributes and actions that you have admired in this leader. When I do this exercise with entrepreneurs and executives, I get a long list of extremely laudable characteristics: visionary, caring, results-oriented, honest, ethical, motivating, excellent communicator, optimistic, charismatic, determined, action-oriented, and so on. The list gets to be a quite impressive set of characteristics. And it’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s possible for any of us to ever have all of these qualities in ourselves.
Then, I ask the entrepreneurs and executives, in thinking about this very same leader whom then know and admire, to make another list on the right hand side of the paper. This time, I ask them to write down any difficulties they’ve had with the leader, any shortcomings the leader has demonstrated, and any imperfections or blemishes that they’ve noticed in his or her personality, habits, or actions.
This second list is revealing. Leaders also exhibit some disappointing behaviors: micromanagement, inability to listen, stubbornness, ignorance of others' feelings, poor communication skills, dull in making presentations, egocentric, rude, overly critical of others, and so on. Interestingly, while these shortcomings are real and visible to others, hey are not fatal flaws.
The point of this exercise is to come to grips with a basic truth about leaders — while leaders can exhibit extraordinary qualities and capabilities that can engender trust and build a following, they can also demonstrate less than admirable and sometimes really irritating characteristics.
I find this to be an extremely reassuring fact of leadership. None of us needs to be perfect to be an exceptional leader.
One of my mentors and a truly remarkable leader was George Kozmetsky. George co-founded Teledyne Corporation, became dean of the business school at the University of Texas at Austin, and proved to be a successful venture investor. George was truly visionary. He could inspire, and he always achieved tremendous results with any initiative that he chose to undertake. At the same time, he was not a clear communicator, and he was well aware of this. His presentations to groups large and small usually came across as confusing, muddled, and contradictory. Groups might be dazzled with a presentation of his, and then would ask, “What did he mean?” Instead of engendering understanding, George had the ability to engender trust. That made him an influential leader.
For me, one of the keys of leadership is to recognize our unique talents and then maximize those, all the time being aware that we also have shortcomings and imperfections. If we do, others will want to follow us.
©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.
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