Leadership by Example

The 10 Tenets of Leadership

 

Sanjiv Chopra, MD

with David Fisher

Introduction

 

I imagine most of you have looked up into the sky and marveled at the sight of a flock of migrating birds flying in V-formation. It is quite a beautiful sight. Each of them keeps its place behind the leader, twisting and turning through the air as the leader does. Following without the slightest squawk. It’s much easier to be a follower than a leader. Scientists have proven that being a follower requires birds to expend much less energy than the leader. It’s easy to be a follower when someone up ahead is cutting down the wind resistance for you.

But what few people know is that this formation has no single leader. One bird flies at the point until it tires and then it drops back and is replaced by another. During the long migration most of the birds have both the opportunity and the responsibility to become the leader of the formation.

Our lives are similar. Very few people are leaders all of the time, in everything we do, but all of us can become the leader for a certain time, in specific situations. Maybe it’s not surprising that the majority of us do not think of ourselves as leaders. In fact, as children we’re taught to be followers: We even play games like ‘Follow the Leader,’ in which there is only one leader but many followers. As you begin reading this I’d like you to pause for just one moment and try to count the number of times in the last day that you’ve been a leader? Literally, pause and think about it. And while you’re answering remember that it is possible to lead at many different levels: In a committee, in your business situation or at a social club, maybe at your religious

institution or the Little League or your university or most important, in your own life in ways that resonate uniquely for you.

It’s the definition of leadership that confuses many people. There is the belief that to be a leader you must have followers and, surprisingly, that isn’t completely correct. Leaders take charge by virtue of their actions and decisions, others choose to follow. A true leader simply moves forward doing what he or she believes is correct, and what resonates for them, often without knowing or even being concerned if there is anyone behind him or her. For example, in 1989 a nine-year old girl living in Nashville, Tennessee named Melissa Poe saw an episode of the inspirational television program Highway to Heaven in which the leading angel, Michael Landon, traveled a quarter-century into the future to show what the world would be like if we didn’t begin to deal seriously with our environmental problems. It was a cold, harsh world, devoid of beauty. This young leader took this message to heart and began by doing a number of things; she recycled, planted trees, educated her friends and even wrote letters to newspapers and politicians, including the President of United States, George H. Bush. The president wrote her back a nice letter urging her to stay in school and not to partake of drugs.

Instead, Melissa eventually founded an organization she called Kids For Clean Environment. Her first club had six members. Remember, this was before kids had easy access to the Internet. To spread the word she picked up the phone and called billboard companies asking them to donate advertising space. Eventually her letter to the president was posted on 250 billboards and she was invited to appear on the Today Show.  From the determination shown by one young person, KIDS F.A.C.E. has grown to become the world’s largest environmental youth organization. It

now has more than 300,000 members in 2,000 club chapters in 15 countries and, in addition to raising environmental awareness, through ongoing projects those young people have planted more than one million trees. 

When Melissa Poe started out she had no intention of becoming a leader, she simply wanted to make the world a better place. Few people set out knowingly to become leaders, rather they see a need and they find a way of dealing with it, and often others choose to follow their example.

The topic of leadership has fascinated me for as far back as I can remember. To most people of the world Mahatma Gandhi is a legend, but for me, growing up in India in the 1950s, he was revered as a saintly person who had wrought us our freedom from the mighty British with the sheer force of his truth and determination and dedication to truth. I can still hear my parents and grandparents speaking of Gandhi with awe. And I wondered, how could one man, who so often looked frail, make such a tremendous difference in the lives of so many millions of people? In school we studied his life, and for the first time I began asking the questions: What makes an effective leader? How can one lead in both simple and grand ways in their everyday lives? What are the attributes of leadership? And what can we learn by listening to the stories about great leaders like Gandhi?

If I ask you to conjure up images of people you consider to be great leaders from the pages of history, from ancient times right to our contemporary time, who would come to mind? Whose stories excite your imagination? Who are those individuals you most admire? Most people, when asked to identify the great leaders, usually respond by naming historic political and military leaders and perhaps some of the better known businessmen. The stories of their lives resonate with them. What is it we learn from those stories? The question becomes, more specifically, how can you, in your everyday life, develop some of the same qualities of leadership that these people have demonstrated?

For three decades Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has championed the GoodWork Project. According to him, good work has three essential attributes: Good work is skilled, it is moral or ethical and it is meaningful. Leaders do good work. These qualities are often found in Leaders. Gardner has talked and written at length about leadership. In Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, he wrote that great leaders provide leadership in two principled ways: Through the stories they tell and through the kind of lives they lead.

Ken Blanchard, the author of The One Minute Manager and 30 other bestselling books on effective business management techniques, agreed completely, pointing out, "The best way to teach people is by telling a story."

The lives of great leaders, men like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela are infused by their passion and sense of purpose. Their courage and  accomplishments  become legendary tales. Those stories of their good works are told and retold by the people they inspire and then they’re told by historians. They leave an everlasting legacy and often they influence our world culture and our way of thinking. Books are written about them, documentaries and movies are made, often little children learn about them in school and sometimes portray them in biographical plays. Those stories resonate with people throughout the world and they do so for a long, long time. And that...