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Leadership is intricate and complex; it is by no means fixed and unchanging.
People often misunderstand leadership. For example, if someone has a prominent title or is appointed to a leadership position, people assume that this person is a leader.
Sometimes this is true. However, when it comes to leadership, titles mean nothing. True leaders cannot be granted, assigned, or appointed.
True leadership comes from a person's influence, and influence cannot be appointed—it must be earned.
The only thing a title can bring is a little time—time you can use to increase your influence, but during which you can also lose whatever influence you had.
Let us first discuss the five major public misconceptions about leadership.
Do you really understand leadership?
1. Are managers leaders?
There is a widespread misconception that leadership and management are the same thing.
In fact, there is a difference between the two. Leadership refers to influencing others so that they follow you, while management focuses on maintaining established systems and processes.
The best way to test whether a person has leadership ability rather than merely being a manager is to ask them to create positive change.
Managers can maintain an established direction of progress, but they cannot change that direction. To take people in a new direction, you must have leadership ability.
2. Are entrepreneurs leaders?
People often assume that all entrepreneurs are leaders, but this is not the case. What they excel at is discovering opportunities and seizing them. They can see potential demand and know how to meet that demand while making a profit.
However, not all entrepreneurs are good at dealing with people. As a result, many entrepreneurs feel they need to find a partner who is skilled in interpersonal matters to compensate for their shortcomings.
3. Are knowledgeable people leaders?
Francis Bacon once said, "Knowledge is power."
If you believe knowledge is crucial to leadership, you are likely to assume that people with knowledge or high intelligence are leaders. This idea is not necessarily correct.
The reality is that there is no shortage of brilliant people whose thinking ability exceeds anything you could imagine, yet whose leadership ability is surprisingly low.
Neither IQ nor academic credentials equate to leadership.
4. Are trendsetters leaders?
Another misconception is that whoever is at the forefront is a leader.
However, being first does not necessarily mean being a leader.
To become a leader, a person must not only be at the forefront but also have people willing to follow them, willing to submit to their leadership, and willing to take action to realize the vision they describe.
Being a trendsetter and being a leader are not the same thing.
5. Are people with high positions and great power leaders?
The biggest misconception about leadership is that leadership is based on position, but this is not the case.
Take some time to think about the relationship between leadership and leaders around you, then discuss it with friends, and you will gain different insights.
Stanley Hufferty once asserted, "It is not the position that makes the leader; it is the leader that makes the position."
And leadership can only be proven through followers. The true measure of leadership can only be influence, not any other factor.
Margaret Thatcher once said, "Power is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."
Those who fancy themselves leaders but have no followers are merely talking big.
Why do some people become leaders while others cannot no matter how hard they try?
If you observe interactions between people carefully, you will find that there are always some people leading others and always some people following others. Moreover, you will find that positions and titles do not determine who is a true leader.
If that is the case, why do some people become leaders while others cannot influence others no matter how hard they try? The following factors may play an important role.
1. Character—who they are
True leadership often originates from within a person.
Over time, entrepreneurs like Kazuo Inamori attract more and more followers because people can genuinely feel the deeper meaning of his character.
2. Relationships—who they know
To become a leader, you must have people who follow you before you can be a leader, and this often requires you to build relationships—the closer these relationships, the greater your leadership potential.
By knowing the right people at the right time and building sufficiently comprehensive interpersonal relationships with them, you can become a true leader in an organization.
3. Knowledge—what they know
Information is crucial to leaders. You need to grasp facts, understand the dynamics of change and the right timing for action, and at the same time have far-sighted insight into future development.
Although knowledge alone cannot make a person a leader, if you lack knowledge, you will certainly not become a leader.
4. Intuition—what they feel
Leaders need not only the ability to control data but also the ability to handle many intangible factors, such as energy, morale, timing, and motivation.
In fact, this is often one of the main differences between managers and leaders.
5. Experience—where they have been
As a leader, the greater the challenges you have faced in the past, the more likely your current followers are to be willing to give you a chance.
Although past experience cannot ensure your credibility, it can inspire people to give you an opportunity to prove your ability.
6. Past achievements—what they have done
For followers, nothing is more convincing than a good track record of past achievements. If you are taking on a leadership role for the first time and have nothing to show, it will be difficult to use past results to win people's trust.
However, during your first leadership role, you should establish the awareness and goal of achieving good results, not fear risk, and do your best to put them into practice. In this way, when you step into a leadership position again, you can use it to shorten the time it takes for people to build trust in you.
Remember, every success you achieve will make your followers more confident in your leadership ability and more willing to follow your leadership. The more success you achieve, the more your leadership will be recognized.
7. Ability—what they can do
For followers, a leader's ability is their bottom line. They want to know whether this person can lead the team to success.
This is the fundamental reason why people are willing to take your orders and acknowledge you as their leader.
Once they no longer believe you can lead them to ultimate victory, they will no longer listen to you or follow in your footsteps.
People who are good at applying the laws of leadership are more likely to become leaders
So, what kind of people are more likely to become leaders?
The answer is people who understand and make good use of the laws of leadership.
Today we will introduce three laws of leadership, hoping you can discover and develop your own leadership.
1. The Law of the Lid
The Law of the Lid means that water in a pot can never rise above the lid. Leadership is like a lid; it determines a person's effectiveness.
The lower a person's leadership, the lower the position of the lid limiting their potential—that is, the lower their potential; conversely, the higher a person's leadership, the higher the position of the lid, and the greater the potential they can realize.
If your leadership is an 8, your effectiveness can never be greater than 7; if your leadership is only a 4, your effectiveness is at most 3. In any case, your leadership often determines your effectiveness and your organization's potential influence.
If you want to climb higher, you must improve your leadership ability. If you want to exert greater influence on the outside world, you must have greater influence.
How much you can achieve depends directly on your ability to lead others.
This relationship between leadership and effectiveness is perhaps most obvious in sports, because the results of sports competitions are immediate and clear at a glance. In professional sports organizations, talent is usually not a problem for a team; almost every team has no shortage of athletic talent.
The real problem is leadership, which determines a person's efficiency in doing things—individual and organizational efficiency are directly proportional to leadership.
How do we apply the Law of the Lid to our work and life?
First, list some of the main goals you expect to achieve. Try to focus on a few main goals—focus on things that will take a year or more to accomplish. List at least 5, but no more than 10.
Then identify which goals require the participation or cooperation of others. Your leadership in these activities will greatly affect your effectiveness.
Second, make a self-assessment of your leadership level.
Third, have others evaluate your leadership.
These others can be your boss, your family members, or colleagues at a comparable level, and ask them to rate you from 1 (low) to 10 (high) according to the evaluation criteria across four aspects: "interpersonal skills, planning and strategic thinking, far-sightedness, and performance."
Then calculate the average of all scores and compare it with your self-assessment score. Based on these scores, see whether your leadership level is lower or higher than you imagined. If there is a large gap, what is causing it? And how willing are you to improve your leadership ability?
2. The Law of Process
Leadership is like an investment; it keeps appreciating. However, the improvement of leadership is a cumulative result, not the work of a single day, and it can never be achieved overnight.
We can find the secret of success in our daily schedules. Look at what a person does every day, day after day, and you will know what kind of person they are and what kind of person they will become.
No matter what a person's goals are, as long as their daily goals are based on improving on the previous day, doing a little better than the day before, and they are strict with themselves and persistent, they will surely achieve their goals.
But most people overestimate the importance of results and therefore underestimate the power of process. People need 50 years to accumulate great wealth, yet we expect to get it in 50 minutes.
Remember, champions do not become champions in the ring; they are only recognized there. Even people with extraordinary talent must always be prepared and train hard to succeed.
Of course, this is not to say that results do not matter. If we need to motivate ourselves to move forward, then we should value results. If we want to improve our abilities, then we need to engage in the process and persevere.
Generally speaking, results motivate people to make decisions, while process motivates people to improve; results are used to motivate people, while process is used to sharpen them; results are used to record achievements, while process is used to cultivate ability; results can challenge a person, while process can change a person.
Leadership experts Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus conducted a study of 90 outstanding leaders from different industries and found that there is a relationship between growth and leadership. "Self-development and continuously raising one's skill level are the most essential difference between a leader and their followers."
It seems that successful leaders are all people who are good at learning and continuously improving themselves.
Next, let us discuss the five stages of leadership improvement.
Stage One: Not knowing that you don't know.
Many people do not know what the value of leadership is; some do not know how important leadership is. Some also believe that leadership applies only to a small number of people—those at the top of the company. Of course, as mentioned earlier, this is a misconception.
If they understand that leadership is influence, and that most people influence at least four people every day, then their enthusiasm for learning leadership-related knowledge and skills will be ignited and brought into play. Otherwise, they will continue to remain in their misunderstanding of leadership.
If a person does not know what they do not know, they will not improve.
Stage Two: Knowing what you need to know.
At some stage in life, many people are in leadership positions, look around, and find that no one is following them.
When this happens, they suddenly realize that they need to learn how to be a leader. This can become a starting point in the learning process.
When you realize that you know nothing about something, you take a step toward knowledge.
Stage Three: Knowing that you don't know.
After you truly step into a leadership position, you will discover the value of leadership, but you will also discover many things you did not know before, and you will realize that your abilities in many areas are still lacking.
This is a good thing, and it is also the key to getting on the road to success.
Stage Four: I know, I grow, I discover.
When you realize that your abilities are insufficient, you will immediately begin to take action and train and improve your abilities every day. Gradually, something exciting happens—you become an outstanding leader.
Stage Five: Because I know.
Even after you become an outstanding leader, you still need to carefully consider every decision you make. However, by this stage, your leadership has almost become subconscious. At the same time, you yourself possess a high degree of leadership intuition.
The only way to achieve this result is to follow the Law of Process. After all, the secret of success in life is to always be prepared and wait for the opportunity to arrive.
3. The Law of Addition
Leaders add value to others.
By far, Costco has the lowest employee turnover rate in the retail industry.
Jim Sinegal, President of Costco, once said: "You can't just take credit for yourself, because the success of an organization comes from the joint efforts of everyone. If you want to hog the spotlight, you won't get employee loyalty. If you can't give credit to others (and take responsibility for failure yourself), then you can't motivate others, and in the end you will only ruin your own career."
He believes that by treating employees and customers with sincerity, profits will naturally increase.
Rather than seeking profit for himself or taking a high salary, Sinegal cares more about serving his employees and enhancing employee value.
In fact, the bottom line of leadership is not how far we ourselves can go, but how far we can help others go. To achieve this, leaders must serve others and enhance their value.
In this way, you will become a better leader. And your subordinates will also do more, be more loyal, and do their work better than you imagined. This is the power of the Law of Addition.
How can you add value to others? There are three guidelines to follow.
First, truly value others.
When a person is promoted to a leadership position, they give up the right to insult others. But this is only the first step in excellent leadership.
Outstanding leaders not only do not harm others but also consciously help others. To do this, leaders must value others, show their subordinates that they care, and let them feel that care.
Do not forget that leadership is closely related to people.
In addition, leaders should also be open and honest, trust others, be caring, be helpful, and be open to criticism.
Remember, leaders who serve others and add value to others will trust others before winning their trust, and will provide service to others before enjoying their service.
Second, make yourself a more admirable person.
To add value to others, the premise is that you must have something valuable that you can give to others.
If you have skills, you learned them through study and training; if you can provide opportunities, you obtained them through hard work; if you have wisdom, you gained it by consciously summarizing experience.
In the process of personal growth, the more purposeful you are, the more you can offer. The more continuously you pursue personal growth, the more continuously you can provide experience.
Third, know what others value and work to achieve it.
As leaders, how do we know what others value and work hard to do it? The answer is to listen!
Inexperienced leaders often rush into work before they understand the people they are about to lead, while mature leaders listen, understand, and then begin work. They listen to their subordinates' stories, discover their hopes and dreams, understand their aspirations, and pay attention to their thoughts and feelings.
They come to understand their subordinates through these aspects and discover their