#199: You can’t fake leadership (lessons from Hitendra Wadhwa’s Small Actions Make Great Leaders)
Dear Friends
I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend. Thursday night took me to Swedish alto-saxophonist Fredrik Kronkvist gig at The Olympia Bakery.
If you’ll allow me some stereotyping, I love the contradiction of Scandinavian jazzmen. Invariably they arrive tightly suited and serious, often with a monk’s balding pate, but the second their instrument takes over, their souls bounce free, scooting across the Atlantic, sliding from New York City down to New Orleans and then ricocheting back to Africa, weaving in rhythms that never quite make it to their feet.
Kronkvist’s alto and his quartet did this and more, interlacing Cannonball Adderly, Winston Mankunku, Abdullah Ibrahim (who is still touring at 90) and more. Halfway through the set, he invited Argentinian cellist, Natasha Otero, to the stage.
A cello can break your heart and witnessing Otero’s cello with Benjamin Jephta’s double bass was like watching a Springbok and Kudu walk together across an open plain.
Kronkvist told us that he’d met Otero four years earlier whilst gigging in South Africa. Today he was her husband. Of course, they played Abdullah Ibrahim’s The Wedding. You can listen to Otero and Kronkvist’s version here. Her cello will transform you.
That was Thursday. Three South Africans, one Argentinian, one Swede; five musicians reminding us that there are sounds and identities connecting us that are far older than any nation.
/strategy
I’m hoping that the long weekend has us all relaxed enough to hear the lesson in Columbia Business School professor, Hitendra Wadhwa’s Small Actions Make Great Leaders.
He describes a situation in which a research scientist, ‘Julie’, shares the first draft of a paper with her boss and co-author, a highly regarded scientist who is known to be difficult. He says, ‘it is the worst piece of rubbish’ he’d ever seen.
Of course, there’s a lot to say about the boss and his leadership, but Julie responds in a way that results in the paper both being published and winning an award.
Her response acknowledges the paper’s weaknesses, reiterates the importance of the research and what it could mean for the world, and asks the grump how she could improve it.
Wadhwa notes that it is the younger scientist who displays leadership.
In workplaces and life, we’re often called on to be leaders without titles. Indeed, if we don’t lead in those moments, we can lose out.
And even the best leaders have bad days, then the rest of us must do our bit.
Wadhwa and his team identified three consistent themes across more than a thousand extraordinary leadership moments.
First, leaders bring the same intent to each interaction – “How can I bring out the best in myself and the best in others in the pursuit of our common positive purpose?”
Second, their responses achieve one or more of the following outcomes:
- Remind themselves and others of what everyone is united in achieving (purpose).
- Respond calmly to the truth in all its nuance – wisdom (remember last week’s letter?).
- Encourage growth for themselves and others.
- Inject warmth, understanding and connection (love) into the conversation.
- Ensure that each person can further their goals in the project (self-realization).
And three, as Julie did, they make sure they’re made concrete through clear simple actions.
Wadhwa notes, “Every action starts as an inner action — directing your intentions, feelings and thoughts to activate the right energy within”.
It is a profound statement. You can’t fake leadership. You must embody it.
To lead, you have to consciously cultivate your ability to express purpose, develop the calm to respond with wisdom, have the ability to encourage others’ growth and self-realization, the generosity to approach each moment with warmth, understanding and connection and the courage to translate it into action.
We easily forget this in the busyness of the average week. Leadership starts with ourselves. It is an intention that we bring to ourselves and each other, we can’t fake it, we must nurture it, without it we’ll only ever be telling and which one of us likes to be told?
//self
The Craftmanship Initiative celebrates “excellence, beauty, and durability”.
I loved their story The VW Doctor is in, in part because I have fond memories of my dad reviving old Kombis and Beetles, and because it tells a tale of creating a life of meaning.
In the early 1970s, Gary Freeman was on his way to becoming a doctor. He hated it and dropped out.
Trying to earn a living, he volunteered to work in a local car repair shop. He couldn’t even fit a spark plug, but he persisted.
Today he runs what he calls a “buy, fix, and sell” shop. Although some VW classics are auctioned for upwards of $200,000, for the most part, Freeman’s business model is premised on high-profit margins. He buys them cheap, fixes and sells. It’s kept him going for forty years.
The article observes, “There’s no mistaking the funky shop for a surgeon’s operating theatre, but patients who enter here always seem to leave in good health”. The clutter is a collection of passion.
In creating his life, Freeman has lived his name and inspired us.
We all know the pressure to conform to some kind of label – whatever your equivalent of ‘be a doctor’ was or is – he shows that it is possible to build a life of meaning and joy, one that is unlikely to pop off the pages of a standardised aptitude test, one that is created step by step, by listening to ourselves.
///soul
Freeman’s story to me back to Marcus Buckingham’s Love + Work.
Buckingham observes, “A career is not a ladder, nor a lattice, nor a jungle gym. A career is a scavenger hunt for love” and “Your fullest life, then, is one where your loves and your work flow in an infinite loop. The energy of the one fuels the energy of the other. Thus, the only way you’ll make a lasting contribution in life is to deeply understand what it is that you love. And the inverse: you’ll never live a life you love unless you deeply understand how to contribute to others.”
I wish you a week of cellos and scavengers.
All the best
Karl