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#175: Good Leaders Love

Good morning all

Today, we’ll get straight to it…

Or maybe not… I keep looking for a way to share Cape Town Heritage Foundation’s Instagram page with you. This beautiful post sharing the story of the Kramats of the Western Cape seems like a good way to do so.

Okay, here we go… Good leaders love.

/ strategy

Most founders start out loving the product that their business then builds around.

Ed Catmull, Pixar’s founder, reflects, in Creativity Inc, that his overwhelming desire was to make the first computer-animated feature film.

In the year after Toy Story’s success, he felt lost. His lifelong ambition had been attained. What was next?

As he reflected, he remembered all the companies that had failed and realised “My desire to protect Pixar from the forces that ruin so many businesses gave me renewed focus. I began to see my role as a leader more clearly. I would devote myself to learning how to build not just a successful company but a sustainable creative culture”.

(You can find more lessons from Pixar here).

It is a moment every founder faces; the moment where you turn your attention from creating a product to building a company.

Great leaders fall in love with building the business, and to do that, they learn that they need to love the people in it.

You might be feeling uncertain. Love? At work?

Your mind might go to archetypal intemperate leaders.

Popular culture bombards us with the brutal leader. Reality TV celebrates the dismissive judge. Much is made of Steve Jobs’s temper, and yet Catmull tells us that there was a Jobs 2.0, that the man who grew Apple to a great business had evolved from the person evicted from Apple. He continued to make mistakes, but more readily admitted them.

The poet JD McClatchy defines it in this way, “Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.”

Bill Campbell, the man that Google CEO Eric Schmidt dubbed The Trillion Dollar, says “Your title makes you a manager, your people make you a leader. To be a good leader you need to first be an excellent manager. Accrue respect, don’t demand it”.

It’s a critical point, being a great leader follows from being a good manager. They’re not exclusive.

Campbell says, “The top priority of any manager is the well-being and success of her people”.

A leader’s love is seen in the quality of attention that they bring and how they grow their people.

Campbell pushes us further, “It’s OK to love. The people on your team are people, and the team becomes stronger when you break down the walls between the professional and human personas and embrace the whole person with love” and “Build communities inside and outside of work. A place is much stronger when people are connected”.

(I have shared other Bill Cambell wisdom here).

Leadership researcher, Marcus Buckingham, reminds us “Leading and following are not abstractions. They are human interactions, human relationships. And their currency is the currency of all human relationships—the currency of emotional bonds, of trust, and of love. If you, as a leader, forget these things, and yet master everything that theory world tells you matters, you will find yourself alone. But if you understand who you are, at your core, and hone that understanding into a few special abilities, each of which refracts and magnifies your intent, your essence, and your humanity, then, in the real world, we will see you. And we will follow”.

So yes, there is the gravitational pull of the sergeant-major barking orders, the Machiavellian pulling puppet strings, the genius who is too occupied with great thoughts to be a good manager, but that’s not leadership. Those are myths. They are distractions. Good leaders love people and they care about the detail.

// self

“Whatever you read is what you shall become” (Georgi Gospodinov).

With that in mind, here are Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant’s Fall (or Spring) new book recommendations.

I am intrigued by mathematician Coco Krumme’s Optimal Illusions: The False Promise of Optimization.

Grant says that ‘she challenges the zeitgeist of optimizing everything’ and ‘reveals that always aiming for the best might well be the worst way to lead our lives and build our societies’.

It seems like a good companion to Jason Hickel’s How Degrowth Will Save the World, which I shared with you last year.

You’ll also remember the story of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses who deliberately chose depth and connection over scale. Another story of love, leadership, and charting your own path.

/// soul

In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung reflects “An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: ‘No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you’”.

It certainly is true of writing this letter.

Most of you aren’t known to me, yet from time to time, one of you will reach out and make my world richer.

Last week, I received this message, “For some time now I’ve been receiving and enjoying your newsletters, having been encouraged to subscribe by my dear friends… I relish the playfulness and humour integrated with insight that ignites learning in your letters”.

The week before this one, “I was so moved and impacted by your perspectives this week, shared with your characteristic generosity and insight. I loved the way you exposed layers of meaning with unexpected joy & learning taking flight for me in each section…”.

Others send weekly messages, providing feedback and encouragement.

I am grateful for your companionship. It helps me bring love to what I do. Thank you.

Karl

PS. You can subscribe here (my father insists that I tell you it’s free. It is 😊), read the archives here and follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram.

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