You Don’t Have to Be the Star

When you go into a leadership role, the world does not need to revolve around you.

Successful companies in Asia are seeing the need for less emphasis on “the leader,” and more emphasis on “leadership.” With more employees retiring than there are coming into the workforce, and with companies trying to grow in the face of a limited talent market and educational reforms that have not really taken off yet in some countries, we need to spend less time worrying about treating leaders like kings and queens and focus more on their ability to create an environment where their employees can do their best work. In other words, worry less about the individual leader, and more about the leadership they provide.

Remember that a successful leader is only successful due to the contributions and efforts of their employees. Steve Jobs did not design the iPhone, nor did Bill Gates write the code for Microsoft Outlook. Leaders are certainly important, but we need to remember the real talent that lies within the workforce…talent that, increasingly, has other job options and can disappear on very short notice if they feel like their environment does not support them.

Leadership in successful, growing organizations is transforming from a hierarchical form based on a military model to a more collaborative, participatory, people-oriented style of work. Leadership is moving from the one to the many. Even the military in the US and other western countries now often focuses more on a collaborative, matrixed style of work in complex situations, rather than emphasizing a purely top-down style. There is a lot of similarity between the traditional way of leadership in the military and traditional Asian companies…perhaps as the military transforms its approach, so too might Asian firms look at how they can make the best use of the limited number of people they now have to work with. Maybe it is time to leave behind the “great man” theory of leadership and stop looking for a General MacArthur or a Lee Kuan Yew to lead your organization, and instead build the leadership capacity to bring together many talented people and produce great things.

Many people come into a leadership position thinking they are going to save the day, or make the big change that will transform the company. But anyone who is leading talented employees today needs to recognize they can have a much more powerful effect if they allow their employees to exercise their skills and their initiative, rather than trying to do everything themselves. Your employees have skills you don’t, they have ideas that never occur to you, and if you do not let them have a voice, you are wasting a lot of talent…and in Asia today, you cannot afford to do that.

This is not to say that you put every decision to a vote, or that you have a meeting every day to discuss whatever issues have arisen in the last 24 hours. Leadership by teams can take much too long. What you should realize, though, is that as a leader your role is not to come up with all the answers yourself, but instead is to harness the talent at your disposal and keep it focused. Instead of always telling people what to do, maybe you should be getting them to tell you what they CAN do.

Remember: Superman could always do more when he was fighting evil alongside the Justice League rather than when he was on his own. Do not worry about being a great leader; instead, worry about providing great leadership. They are not the same thing.