My view on leadership

In my last article, I spoke about leadership and why innovation requires leadership. I now would like to come back on this concept, as I see it as one of the key factors of success in the high tech entrepreneurial environment.

Many theories already exist to understand leadership, but I will only speak about my own perception. It is certainly biased so if your are interested about leadership, I recommend you to get more details on leadership theories – Here are some instances: there is the trait theory which tries to explain leadership through a list of qualities leaders should have, there are the leadership styles theories like authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire leadership. There are also other theories like the transactional leader who uses rewards or punishments to make a team achieve a predetermined goal versus the transformational leader, who intensively uses communication to motivate the team to attain the desired outcome. And there exist many others…

In my opinion, leadership is above all about having a Vision. The first company I worked for, was a startup called Indigo. The founder had invented a new printing technology and he decided to commercialize it. The founder was a true leader and in every meeting, he reminded us his vision : “Everything that should become digital will be digital and printing is no exception.” This was in 1995 and it was quite revolutionary. At that time, I was really impressed by the founder’s vision and thus, I worked very hard. I was strongly motivated, just because I was sharing his vision. Actually, the founder was so successful in expressing his vision that he managed to sell his business to Hewlett-Packard in 2001 – By the way, we can say that the founder was a transformational leader as he managed to motivate his employees by communicating his vision.

Great political leaders are also great visionaries like Gandhi who wanted to free his country, like Churchill, who always believe in the strength of Britain even in the worst moments of the war, and like De Gaulle who always believed in the victory of the allies. In business, visionary leaders are generally very successful like Steve Jobs who envisioned the power of the graphic user interface, like Herb Kelleher from SouthWest Airlines who saw the possibility of another way of operating airlines company.

Vision is important because it gives a sense of direction to a company. Thanks to his vision, a leader is someone who makes people achieve high goals as opposed to telling them to do things. But I believe Vision is not everything. Because Leading is also about interacting with people and making things happened, a leader has to delegate, to work with others. A leader has to understand people’s feelings and emotional intelligence is an important factor in leadership. I remember, when I participated in seminars on leadership, my professor just read us an extract of “The Little Prince” from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to make us understand what leadership is. In this passage, the Little Prince meets a fox and wants to become friend with the fox. The fox explains that the Little Prince should first tame him. To do so, he should come closer everyday, and then, the fox will get used to him. They will eventually become friends and the fox will be unique for the Little Prince. The Little Prince now understands why his rose on his planet is unique and special as, in a way, his rose has also tamed him. The fox explains that the Little Prince is responsible for what he has tamed, and therefore the Little Prince is responsible for his rose. I think what our professor wanted us to understand is that leadership is also about taming people. Leaders work with others for a common goal but it requires first to get to know each other. Also, like the Little Prince for his rose, the leader is responsible for the ones he works with. I really like this story, because it illustrates that leaders care about people. And this is exactly what Warren Bennis, a university professor, famously known for his studies on leadership, says when making the distinction between managers and leaders: “Managers focus on systems; leaders focus on people”.

Warren Bennis, indeed drew twelve distinctions between Managers and Leaders, in particular he said that: “Managers administer; leaders innovate”. “Managers focus on systems; leaders focus on people”. “Managers have short-term perspective; leaders have long-term perspective”. “Managers copy; leaders show originality”. “Managers emulate the classic good soldier; leaders are their own person”.

Leadership is indeed distinct from management. Leadership is about vision, while management is about process. A leader shares his vision and work with people to make things happen. A manager cares about process and how to execute a task. To the contrary of startups, it seems to me that the more companies grow and become bigger, the more they require managers to administer and control company’s processes, and the less they require leaders. Big companies eventually fail because there are only managers and no more leaders to give direction.

And yes, leadership is about decision and the courage to decide and give direction. Even though a leader can get advices from several people, at the end of the day, decisions are taken alone. A leader is often the one between the shareholders and the employees and he is the sole responsible for his decisions. I remember another seminar I attended, the professor’s theory was that a leader is someone who is able to accept uncertainty. And maybe, this is the best definition of a leader, as a leader is someone who makes essential decisions for his company, where uncertainty is maximum and cannot be reduced. I believe, however, that leaders are ready to accept uncertainty, because making decision is a way to choose their own path and it is therefore the expression of personal freedom.

To summarize my view on leadership, I think leadership is composed of three fundamental elements: vision, people and acceptance of uncertainty. Vision is to give direction. People is to make projects happen. Uncertainty is linked with essential decisions, that leaders have to make.