Leaders produce more leaders, not more followers

By Hannah Liu. To see all blogs click here.

"I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers." —Ralph Nader

• We're all leaders in some form. It's easy to think that getting things done is the ultimate goal, and therefore it's easy to fall into the trap of doing things for people, rather than growing people.

• We often see and act on what's directly in front of us, rather than acting on and optimising for the long term.

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." –Ronald Reagan

• Not trying to put words into Mr. Reagan's mouth, my interpretation of 'gets the people to do the greatest things' means giving people the tools and the space to learn, so they can do the great things:

  • L1 => do everything yourself

  • L2 => do everything yourself but show people after the fact what you did

  • L3 => co-work with others to get things done

  • L4 => set appropriate parameters and give appropriate support (leave, push, support) to allow others to solve things

  • L5 => replace yourself

  • L6 => replace yourself with others who can replace themselves etc

    • ie. make redundancy redundant

• It can feel like: working with others = decreased speed + decreased quality

• When actually: not working with others = decreased speed + decreased quality

  • growing others = long term(growing speed + growing quality)

    • not increased, but constantly growing

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others." —Jack Welch

**For funsies, a quote that didn't make the cut this time (for obvious reasons i think): "You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership." –Dwight Eisenhower