leadership is not a popularity contest

Thinking about our world today it very much looks like we are facing a leadership crisis. It is not that we have a shortage of leaders. If anything, we have more leaders today than ever before. We also have full libraries of texts written while attempting to identify that elusive set of traits which make a leader great.

We talk about charisma, emotional intelligence, communication skills, ability to motivate and inspire, strategic foresight, and many, many other traits and attributes a successful leader should have. All things that enable the leaders to sit up high on a platform and reasons for others to look up to them. We disqualify or promote people based on how many of the right boxes they tick, how many of these characteristics they can demonstrate.

The one thing we seldom talk about however, is that true leaders do not set out to win a popularity contest. Ironically, the democratic elections these days resemble closely such contests, but this is exactly where our system fails us. This is precisely why we end up without the leaders we need. Because we choose the ones we do not.

Let’s be honest, the best leadership decisions are the ones with long term positive impact, the ones that create the most benefit for the largest number of people possible. Sometimes the numbers are not the key, but the ethical background is. The best leaders will always do the right thing for the right reasons because… well, because it is the right thing to do. These statements do not need to be demonstrated. They are intuitive truths. We know they are true. They feel right. How can it be a good decision if it has predominantly negative effects in the long run? How can it be good if it benefits few people in limited ways? How can it be good if it is ethically and morally flawed?

Trouble is, these ethical decisions, maximizing benefit for most people, made for the right reasons and in the right way… are generally deeply unpopular. There are many reasons why. They may be unpopular with the privileged, or the wealthy and powerful. They may need a lot of people to change the way they do certain things. They may require we learn new stuff, and so on. For example, the (high) number of prime ministers Australia had in recent times is linearly correlated with their intent to implement decisions unpopular with behind the scenes power players. This says nothing about the actual nature of the decision, except that it was unpopular with the wrong powerful people. Or the mining and oil companies who do not like the push for green, renewable energy. They talk the right talk (can they do anything else?) but they drag their feet in terms of action. Or banning free plastic bags in shopping centres, which means that everyone needs to change the way they shop and carry lots of reusable bags of their own. Annoyingly inconvenient. Right? And the list goes on…

At the end of the day, we all lose if the right decisions are not implemented and enforced. If the most important criterion for a decision is its popularity with the masses, we are in grave danger. This is where we need the right type of leaders… and we need to give them time to do their work. The right work. For the right reasons. Whether we like it or not.

With this in mind, the most important trait of a leader becomes their ethics. One cannot allow an unethical person to lead for a long time, as they will inevitably corrupt the entire structure.

One statement we all feel rings true is that leaders inspire through created experience, not intellectual communication. They do say a lot of things in trying to disseminate and bring clarity to their actions and decisions, but it is the effect of those decisions – the Experience – that inspires and prompts people to follow. In the genuine leader’s case that is. Once again, the real measure of the experience is the long-term effect: is it a positive or a negative one? Good or bad? And for whom?

That is why at times mission statements, values and corporate culture programs fail when they are not backed up by matching experience. Without it, they are but words.

As Ram Charan, from The Leadership Pipeline said “The culture of any organisation is the collective behavior of its leaders. If you want to change your culture, change the collective behavior of your leaders.”

And it is behavior that creates the experience. Which is why leaders chasing the popularity chimera are failing on the whole spectrum: they fail themselves, they fail us, and they fail their organisations.

But, most importantly, they fail our future…