Leading, leader, leadership tends to mean direction, logic, confidence, assuredness
Over my 31 years of speaking on leadership, leading, leader skills, leader traits I have
searched for a finite number of traits, aka: 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, or the
10 or the 12. With my groups of community leader development groups sponsored by
Chambers of Commerce, supervisors inside city, county or state government or those inside
private or public corporations or those working for the military I have tried several
exercises to search for THE TRAITS.
Another strategy was to survey leaders.
Another strategy was to read a few hundred books on Leaders, Leading and Leadership
that were the big sellers beginning with Warren Bennis written by researchers, written by
leaders (Jack Welch-GE, Richard Branson-Virgin, Mary Kay, Etc. written by speakers and
college professors of business. From reviewing the bold print traits in those books and my
highlighted notes or margin notes in those books I collected over 450 seaparate traits.
Added to that I read several articles, research papers and a few books about the TRAITS OF
LEADERS that included many types of surveys and once again discovered hundreds of
traits.
Then I combined all of what I found others wrote about traits of leaders and compared
them to what my various groups had said about the traits they thought were important and
what they thought they wanted in a leader and looked for the top 12, which I labeled as the
Cornerstones of Productive Leading.
All that said, also while working on my doctorate increativity I did a study of the traits of
HIGHLY CREATIVE PEOPLE based upon the studies and writing of nearly 150 authors,
professors, researchers, speakers, consultants and found over 450 traits.
But like the sampling of the various messages in the thread I just read on CSTC seldom do
the traits of LEADERS match the traits of HIGHLY CREATIVES.
My view is that they do not match.
HIGHLY CREATIVES can start firms but seldom take them to their maximum success and
maintain them
George Land talked about that in his famous book GROW OR DIE. Most business books I
have looked at talk about the PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE or the COMPANY LIFE CYCLE or
Leadership books often talk about the varied types of leadership styles required during the
various phases that a business goes through from the beginning thru growth to high
success to continuing on
Most of the HIGH CREATIVES have many traits that align with the traits of
ENTREPRENUERS not MANAGERS and not LEADERS over the long run.
Walt Disney
Steve Jobs
Richard Branson
Michael Dell
Mark Zuckerberg
Famous Amos
Tom Edison
Ted Turner
they may have started companies but they did end up running.
Bernard Lefokosky wrote a book in 1980, BREAKTIME. It was based on interviews with
many people he met around the country who had all chased the American Dream, obtained
college degrees, became licensed, passed the bar or completed Ph.D.s, MDs or whatever
highest ranking of honor was in their field. But once they got to the level of leadership from
middle manager to top management inside of a company (they were not entrepreneurs)
they quit and walked away.
His synopsis was that they chased a dream of a stereotype for what an architect, lawyer,
minister, professor, inventor, advertiser was but when they go to the level inside of
companies of what they had envisioned they quit, walked away or were fired or simply let
go and they changed occupations that let them do more of what they truly loved to do
which did not include:
managing. leading, supervising people but rather creating, doing, dreaming
Now at the lower levels of leading from team leader to supervisor, to department manager
to middle manager to top management to CEO how leaders are chosen is based on
consistency
follow through
completion
persistent focus
predictability of success
My contention is that HIGHLY CREATIVES who become leaders become leaders because
they started the company or the team but they seldom stay the course. It is not their nature
to stay the course
One of the groupings of traits that you seldom find in HIGHLY CREATIVES consist of
patience
emotional intelligence factors
political skills
office politics
game playing with employees or others or clients
situational ethics
My life experiences and study and work has shown me that people typically want their
leaders to be
logical
focused
consistent
pragmatic
realistic even when they are being idealistic
caring about their employees, teams, customers
sensitive to how their decision impact their people
or what most style instruments (Myers Briggs, Herrmann, Human Synergistics, Neethiling
and many others) describe as
upper left brain (cognitive)
and
lower right brain (limbic)
will people follow a dreamer in the beginning....yes....but not forever
if the dreamer does not produce reliable reality or consistency most people who look for a
more down to earth leader.
often the dreamer, HIGHLY CREATIVE types end up icons, figureheads, names only...
Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney
Another example from American Advertising is George Lois, an extreme HIGH CREATIVE
who created companies and then sold them, gave them over to some of the top people or
simply left to start another one...when I interviewed one of the key people who had stayed
with him for years from company to company he basically said it was the
office politics
the games
the having to be more manager like
the predictability that employees wanted
one of my local clients, a very successful highly creative real estate salesman, then broker,
constantly was looking for new challenges, new things to excite him and use his creative
drive. He hired me to access his staff. The highest producing were all type A's or highly
creatives. He was both.
My suggestion to him was he had to find ways to help motivate the 5 biggest producers or
they would leave him. At the same time his most consistent people needed to see him in
person more often.
The 5 highest multi-million sales producers did leave and started their own firm called THE
LEADERS. I knew one of them personally and recommended that they talk openly about
their TYPE A natures and that they would no doubt burn each other out. The firm lasted
just over a year before it broke up.