Rather Than Copying a Leadership Style, Create One

Creatives know that copying someone else’s work is uncool. It may also be illegal, but to a true Creative that is far less important than the lack of ethics displayed by a copycat.

When it comes to leaders, you should not copy either, but for different reasons.

When you take business classes, when you read books on leadership, and when you talk to your peers, you are going to be exposed to plenty of examples based on other people’s experiences. You will also hear lots of broad-based lessons, or fundamental principles that may help you. But you cannot just take other people’s experiences or a bunch of generic concepts and plug then into your firm and expect the same results. You are different from them, and your employees are different from theirs.

The trick is to take those ideas you think are useful and figure out how they apply to your situation. This means you cannot just study leadership; you also need to study your organization. Also, as you try to implement the lessons you learn, realize that you may need to adjust as you go along. Be open with others about what you are trying to accomplish so you can get their feedback. What sounds like a great idea in the classroom may not be so great in the office.

When I was in Afghanistan years ago, mentoring the faculty at a university in Kabul, they made it clear they wanted to adopt the structure and curriculum of a top American university as their own. I carefully pointed out to them that most of their faculty only had a bachelor’s degree, and they had very few textbooks written in their local languages. Plus, universities in the US are not dealing with an insurgency that threatens the country, and American students are not worried about whether their village back home has been attacked. The two environments are just so different that taking an American style and plugging it into an Afghani university would be insane. And so, we found a happy medium: a curriculum and faculty structure that improved their capabilities, but in a way they could actually achieve.

My work in Asia has revealed a lot of interest in Western styles of leadership, especially the evolving ideas about how to lead in a knowledge economy. What I have suggested to these young, emerging leaders is that they not try to just copy the American style of doing things. What we do in the US does not necessarily work in Hong Kong or Thailand or Singapore…or even in Canada or England. You need to consider the context in which you are trying to apply these lessons, and part of that context is the culture in which you, your employees, your peers, and your bosses were raised. People cannot just shrug off years of culturalization simply to meet the demands of a new book on management practices. Create a leadership style that leads to success for you, rather than just copying one that has led to success for someone else in a different environment.

Yes, you need to learn, but more importantly, you need to learn how to make it work.