Defining Leadership

Let’s start with an important distinction.

Leadership is not the same as management.

A leader is not the same as a boss.

Steve Jobs once said, “Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.”

It’s so true.

Let me tell you something.

You don’t want to be a boss. You don’t want to just be an employer.

Those are incredibly limiting.

If you’re just a boss, then you have employees working for a paycheck.

If you’re a leader, you have something much better. You have followers.

If you’re a good leader, you have followers who would take the hill with you.

If you’re a great leader, you have followers who would lay down their lives with and for you.

In other words, leadership is so much deeper than management.

Managers, supervisors, and bosses (whatever you want to call them) might be able to motivate you through fear, money, or status, but they tend to miss the most important motivators.

Leadership is different.

I love John Maxwell’s definition. He says, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

Think about that definition for a second.

That definition states three things.

First, a leader decides what to do or where to go.

Second, a leader should embody that decision themselves.

Third, a leader effectively communicates that decision or vision to others around them.

I think that's an excellent summary of leadership, but let's keep pressing.

Because leadership isn’t just about something you do, it’s also about something you internalize. It’s about something that you believe in to the core of your being.

Jim Collins, a brilliant student of business and leadership, identifies a concept in his research that he calls “Level 5” leadership.

He writes, “Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company… Their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.”

This is so important.

Collins and his research team spent over five years conducting painstaking research to understand great companies, and one of the chief discoveries was that great companies had leaders who were more concerned with the cause than with themselves.

Let me repeat that.

Great leadership, according to Collins, is about being more concerned with the cause than you are with yourself.

That’s powerful.

In other words…

Leadership is about dying to yourself for a greater good.

Former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink writes in his book Extreme Ownership that “Leaders must always operate with the understanding that they are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests.”

There’s definitely a different mindset you have to get into if you’re going to charge into enemy lines.

If you believe in something so much that you would actually be willing to sacrifice your life for it... You might be getting somewhere.

That’s leading with a cause.

I’ve got a friend in the finance world.

He doesn’t view his job as just making more money or helping other people make more money.

He says that he fights poverty.

That’s powerful.

That's a cause you could get behind.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote a masterful work observing and comparing the leadership of four historical giants: Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Goodwin raised the question, “Do leaders shape the times or do the times summon their leaders?”

She concluded that these four remarkable leaders, while vastly unique from one another, were united by a fierce ambition and perseverance.

There’s a word for this. It’s resilience.

Resilience is the ability to sustain ambition in the face of adversity.

Soak that in.

Resilience is the ability to sustain ambition in the face of adversity.

Goodwin observed that all four of these great leaders were guided by a moral purpose, and they remained resilient despite the adversity they all faced.

And to be clear… each of these men experienced profound challenges.

Abraham Lincoln had near-suicidal depression and faced poverty most of his life.

Theodore Roosevelt lost his young wife and mother on the same day.

Franklin Roosevelt was struck with polio and became paralyzed from the waist down.

Lyndon Johnson suffered a nearly fatal heart attack.

Did they throw in the towel?

Absolutely not.

They remained passionately ambitious in the face of adversity.

One of my leadership heroes, Winston Churchill, said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts… If you're going through hell, keep going."

These are all beneficial definitions or understandings of leadership.

However, I’d like to leave you with one last definition of leadership, one that I initially had a difficult time accepting.

It’s a definition of leadership that was taught by one of the most documented leaders in all of ancient history.

In fact, this leader birthed a movement that has grown to over 2.6 billion people (which is nearly one-third of the global population).

Many consider this individual to be the greatest leader in all of history.

The evidence, in my opinion, would certainly support that claim.

You may know who I’m referring to...

Jesus.

Now, I know there are many of us who aren’t particularly religious, but I think one of the marks of a great leader is the ability to learn from anyone, regardless of whether we agree with everything they teach.

So, here is a man who led a massive revolution spanning thousands of years and growing to nearly a third of our global population.

Personally, I can’t think of a more impressive leadership resume than that.

The question is, did Jesus offer any leadership advice?

Yes, actually.

In fact, his advice may surprise you. It surprised me.

He said, “Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else.”

In other words, if you want to be a great leader, serve others.

In fact, Jesus went on to say that if you want to be a great leader, you must sacrifice your entire life to serve.

Which is actually what he ended up doing.

Historical records show that the Romans crucified him.

They were threatened by his leadership and the nature of his cause, so they killed him.

Interestingly, without delving into the entire narrative, Jesus' sacrificial leadership was the precise spark that gave the movement its momentum.

Scholars note how the early Christian movement grew at an unprecedented rate.

Within three centuries, Christianity went from 0.000015% of the population to more than half of the Roman Empire.

Not to mention, Jesus' leadership created a movement that would endure for thousands of years. That in and of itself is unprecedented.

There are millions of churches worldwide, comprising billions of Christians.

I mean, what Jesus started is absolutely massive.

We know from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that only 36% of companies last 10 years and about 21% survive to see their 20th anniversary. Beyond that, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that only about 12% of companies are older than 26 years.

Other studies show that only about a half a percent (0.5%) of all companies have what it takes to last 100 years.

So, maybe there’s something to pay attention to when it comes to sacrificial or servant leadership.

Maybe that’s the key to truly motivating and inspiring others around us.

It’s challenging to define something like leadership.

Leaders come in all shapes and sizes.

The context in which we lead comes in all shapes and sizes.

But it does seem that there are fundamental truths to leadership that we can all hold to that can help us try to define what leadership really is.

Let’s recap:

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

A leader dies to themselves for a greater good.

A moral purpose guides a leader, and they remain resilient despite the adversity they will inevitably face.

If you want to be a great leader, serve others.

Be a sacrificial leader.

Okay, that’s it for today.

Before we part ways for the week, I would love to send you my list of leadership resources.

Great leaders are great learners.

I put together a list of the best resources I have on leadership that truly transformed the way I think and how I lead.

You can find this on my website - zachwhite.com

Thank you for being part of our leadership community!

I’ll see you next week.

- Zach White