What is Leadership? Who is a leader?
The illusive feeling on my leadership skills...or not?
Since the very early days of being a clown in my classes at schools, who used to make funny things whenever I was on stage for a presentation, I realized I have something weird inside. Not only just because I can confidently speak something in front of a crowd, but also, I'm addicted to that feeling, the feeling of giving a talk, or a presentation, in my own manner sometimes.
Not all of my talks are successful, of course, but because of that addiction, I gradually think that, I have leadership skills.
Throughout the steps in this ridiculous meaningless life of Ken Pham, I'd been always questioning the word: Leadership. What is it? who can be a leader? Life experience plus a high volume of reading articles, watching movies, and remembering quotes gave me the answer, although I usually can't convince others on this idea and arguing with it myself.
Leadership is about creating leaders.
I hadn't had a systematically structural self-explanation on Leadership and what were the principles I need to follow. Then, I came across this book: "The Leader Who Had No Title", by Robin Sharma - my very first teacher on leadership.
Yes. It's an illusion. I'm so naive, folks...
I was first introduced to the book by my mentor. And it took me 2 days to read it, with the motivation from a friend of mine.
The book is a story of Blake, a distressed and hopeless U.S.A military veteran, who went through a life-changing journey with Tommy. Tommy is a friend of Blake's father, who long passed away. It's the journey than open a whole new world for Blake, where he'll be the next Leader-Without-Title, reaching the exceptional levels in life, but also, it's the journey that ends the beautiful and inspirational life of our old friend Tommy.
In this post, I'm not gonna go through chapter by each chapter and brief the story, which everyone can read by themselves, but I'll systematically give you the organization of the lessons on How to be a Leader-Without-Title from the book.
4 Manifesto + 4 Principles
As simple as that.
Each manifesto is taught to Blake by 4 teachers that he met, which consists of principles, written as an acronym
Manifesto 1: You need no title to be a leader (Anna)
Innovation: Never stop improving ourselves. I found myself relating to this principle quite much. As a novice in the Product Management field who acknowledges that there are so many things to learn, I often fall into the trap of tools and frameworks: not spending time reflecting and measuring the values they brings and why. I just do what I've been told. I use the old frameworks, functioning my teams with the same tools everybody is using. Those tools are great. They were created with the long history of researching, testing, and are proven to be useful and applicable in many scenarios. However, rarely do I ask: "Why did I use this framework? How can I improve this? Why do I work the way I'm working?..." As long as I blindly keep following guides and conventions, there will be no valuable improvements. There will be no innovation. And everything still won't change. By intensively and consistently questioning our work and putting our mind around how can we make it better than yesterday, we will little by little create innovation, which produces immense values to ourselves and our society.
Mastery: No matter what work you are doing, trying to be a master in it will build success. The first step in becoming a master, as guided in the book, is to try to be the FMOB: the First, Most, Only, and Best, and by Best, we have to be BIW: Best In the World. Sounds silly, right? That's why there're not plenty of people around that top-notch of the mountain. As not many people believe they can be a BIW, they won't be. And as there're many people can not reach that level in their areas, which is initially considered as hard, the road will be easier for the top folks as there're less competitors, compared to the lower levels.
Mastery contributes greatly to the ability of Innovation also. We have to learn the rules before we break them. My story of PM framework-trap could be improved by intensively focus on 2 to 3 frameworks and tools. I'd need to understand the rules and try to master them well. Then I can break them, transform them into something better, in my own way. That's where innovation is born.
Authenticity: Live with our core values. As we build our behaviors and actions around our core values and the fundamentals contributing to a great character: honesty, sincerity, trustworthy, respectful, and many other words that can't be count, we then can spread the influence to other people, who will be able to feel those values, feel connected with us in some way, and continuous influence creates changes, all the time.
Guts: A must-have principle for true leaders. Great decisions start with guts. Great changes start with guts. Great success starts with guts. While many others would have been asking "What others will think? Should we pack this up?", Elon Musk took the courage to split his $40M for SpaceX and Tesla, in the middle of the 2009 Great Recession, and busted his ass off to get through. And taking a gut isn't all about business or big decisions, it's a fundamental moment of changes in our everyday life.
Ethics: I guess we don't need to discuss much about this. Sooner or later, unethical businesses will die. They just don't work.
"Couldn't find a cool quote about Ethics. Sorry." - Ken Pham
Manifesto 2: Turbulent Times Build Great Leaders (Ty Boyd)
“The more time you spend outside of your comfort zone, the wider it grows” - Robin Sharma
Speak with candor: Be straightforward and respectful. Communication is the fundamental skill for every other skills. Without great communication, people just won't be touched and inspired. If we want to tackle a problem, we need to talk in a way so that the listeners can understand it clearly. If we want to seize an opportunity for business efficiency, we need to be honest about current struggles of the inefficiencies. Great communication starts with candid speaking. Another great lesson I learnt from the book in scope of this principle is from Ty's answer to Blake's question:
Blake: “Sometimes I wonder whether if I’m too honest in my communication with the people I work with at the bookstore, I’ll offend them”
Ty: “There’s a difference between being candid and being rude, Blake. Use your good judgment. And simply remember: you can say whatever you want so long as you say it with respect.”
Prioritize: Do what's important. 80% of outcomes (outputs) come from 20% of causes (inputs). Putting our effort on what matters most to our life and work will bring the most value for us. Self-explanatory right? I'll put a quote that used to shocked me quite bit here:
If you have too many priorities, it means you have no priority - Someone
Adversity breeds Opportunities: Every curse has a corresponding blessing. Every failures will create another door that if we can acknowledge and be able to seize the opportunity, we can be even more successful than before. In the end, it all lies in our perception on the adversity. If we keep focusing on the negative results that it brings, we'll miss out the good things.
Response over React: In the days of crisis, it is extremely difficult to just sit back, take a calmly deep breath to figure out solutions for our problems. We usually get stuck in the state of continuous working and doing things in pressure without carefully draft out an action plan beforehand. We react, instead of response. Be proactively take charge whenever we face challenges, as it is the first step in leading our organizations and people through crisis.
Kudos: Compliment is an art. We must have heard the story of Shark Phu on giving a compliment for a female Founder in Shark Tank Vietnam season 4. I'm not justifying the story, but instead emphasizing the importance of compliment and the effects it may rise, especially when we kudos people at the wrong time. People all want to be listened. They all want to be appreciated for what we have committed. As leaders, we need to show our appreciation on people's effort for contributing their time and work for the organizations. And one of the simplest ways to do that is giving honest compliments, or kudos. But at the same time, don't ignore the power of honest feedback and comment.
Manifesto 3: The Deeper Your Relationships, the Stronger Your Leadership (Jackson)
“Business is a vehicle to help other human beings” - Robin Sharma
Helpfulness: Doing business is all about helping people. This is one of the most impressive quotes I learn from the book. It's so fundamental that we often forget, and instead looking only at the numbers and outputs when running businesses. And, if we want to help other people, we have to be helpful first. In order to be helpful, the book recommends we should do more than we're paid to do. The outcomes will surely arrive.
Understanding: Being helpful does help, but it won't be enough. We'll need to understand our people. One of the fundamentals skill that help us understand others is Active Listening. Not just listen, but actively listen. When doing so, people begin to realize that we have their best interests in mind. And so, they begin to give us their very best.
Mingle: People loves working with whom they like and love. Going out and be a part of the community and society. Build meaningful connections. The unexpected rewards will arrive. In this area of technology and remote working, face to face and offline interactions, which are the undirectedly crucial vehicle in creating touching connection with others, are getting scarcer. Personally, I'm working remotely with software development teams. Due to some unknown mysteries, many developers are shine to show their face. I don't know why, since I actually used to work as a Front-End Dev. But the way I keep my connection closed with the teams is frequently checking their work and health status and also showing some personal moments throughout the days.
Amuse: Well, work can't be always serious, with harsh meetings and conversations. Work has to be fun sometimes. That kind of atmosphere in the workplace can even boost our work productivity if implementing with an appropriate manner. Let's amuse this post with something cute. Here's Mi, my Boss :)
Nurture: People are the most important element to a winning business. When we water the seed, it grows into a tree. Human is just like that. And when we are nurturing people, we are nurturing our businesses.
Manifesto 4: To Be a Great Leader, First Become a Great Person (Jet)
See clearly: How many times do you have to stop doing something in your life, questioning: "What is real?". Strange right? Our reality is made by us. We understand things as we are, not because things are. This makes sense since we were raised by our parents, by teachers, by a society that have default meanings and what should be on nearly everything in this planet at the beginning of our life. And as we are all brought up in very different environments and people, our perception on the world is also not the same. That is why whenever working in an organization, it's so important for leaders to perceive a thing through not just her lens and that of others, but also the true characteristic of it in front of teams. It will help us avoid biased thinking which leads to ineffective decisions.
Health is Wealth: After spending 20 years of living and researching, working with many renowned scientists around the world, I came up with this model explaining about the importance of health. And I won't talk no more on this.
Inspiration: We nearly can not inspire or motivate people around us if we can not inspire and motivate ourselves. It's obvious. Finding inspiration is relatively easy. We all know how most of the time. I suggest listening to music, reading quotes, or reading my articles for examples.
Neglect not your family: Well sadly, I failed this principle most of the time. I found it hard to have a conversation with my dad, or sharing stuff with my mother and brother, although I think about them as a motivation for myself day in and night out. Don't be so. Family are the ones who will accept us, no matter who we are and what we do. Spend time with your family while you can folks.
Elevate your lifestyle: YOLO. You only live once. We all only live once. Why not enjoying it while we can?
Press F to respect the folks who are reading this line after a long boring period of reading my post. I hope these reviews can help you all in not just getting a sense of how good this book is (it really is :)) but also have another perspective on leadership and what qualities contribute to it.
Buy this book already. Really a good taste.
Any comment on my post is warmly welcomed. Please give me some. I'm hungry for them.
That's all. Thank you! And see yall later on my next post.
Reference
My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ken4real
My diagram on FigJam
3. Images
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