We have a romantic vision of leaders and leadership. History books are filled with stories of leaders that have leadership qualities that make them larger than life. But isn’t that what makes a great leader? Their leadership qualities make them appear grand, extremely confident and inspirational. They motivate and inspire people to greatness and success.
That romantic connection with great leaders of the past can create a great amount of pressure on current leaders. In the eyes of the masses, they should emulate the traits that are found inspirational from those past leaders. That is why leaders take on the romantic view of leadership qualities and habits.
Understanding Leadership Qualities
We tend to attribute the success or failure of an organization to the leader, whether it is deserved or not. That is understood and accepted. If the organization experiences great success, it is directly attributed to the leader.
Look at Apple, Uber and Amazon, as just a small sample of that attribution. The leaders of those organizations are lauded as visionary and brilliant. It can be hard to debate these accolades. Likewise, when companies fail, the responsibility of that failure lands directly on the leader. No matter how small or well hidden the mistake is, we like to say the leader is responsible for even the smallest of errors that lead to a failure. As a result, we view the leader as the driving force for everything and anything that happens to an organization during the leader’s tenure.
A Different View
Romanticizing the role of the leader makes it easier to make sense of things, but it can mislead us into overlooking the true causes of success or failure. One example of this phenomenon is Marissa Mayer, of Yahoo fame. Ms. Mayer was amazingly successful at Google and was a ‘rising star’ in the world of tech. She had the golden touch. She was hired at Yahoo and the thought was that if anyone could do it, she could! Yahoo experienced some successes with Ms. Mayer, but overall she has been responsible for the miserable and repeated failures of this struggling organization. Now, how could Ms. Mayer be a champion in one organization and a miserable failure at another, when the organizations are so similar?
Take some time and read this study to understand more about leadership qualities.
