I like books that address effective leadership characteristics because they can tell us how to be better leaders of ourselves, as well as better leaders of others: nobody can effectively lead others without first being an effective leader of themselves.
For that reason, I bought Lee Iacocca’s Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
Although it turns out that this is not a book designed to tell you how to be a leader, Mr. Iacocca does share his insights on the characteristics he believes every effective leader must have. He calls these the 9 C’s:
- Curious, Creative, Communicator
- Character, Courageous, Conviction
- Charisma, Competent, Common Sense
You may recall that Bill George has a nice list of leadership characteristics, too:
- Pursuing purpose with passion
- Practicing solid values
- Leading with heart
- Establishing enduring relationships
- Demonstrating self-discipline
When you add these two lists together, I’d say you get a pretty complete list.
Mr. Iacocca goes on to say that the key to running a company successfully is to
- Hire the best people
- Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize
He noted the importance of having a single sheet of paper that has your priorities on it. (Of course you could accomplish the same thing with a PDA, if desired.) Amen. I agree wholeheartedly, and think this is one of the most important things you can do to be effective, professionally and personally.
He also noted the importance of surrounding yourself with people who have differing views, so you can learn from them. Clearly, at the personal level, this also means talking and listening to people who see things differently than you do and reading books and articles by people whose views differ from yours.
Again, I am in 100% agreement with him on this. It’s interesting that, when I was younger, I figured I would become more stubborn and less open to the views of others as I got older. I had seen many older people like that, and I thought it would be neat to reach a stage in life where I didn’t care what anyone said. Turns out that the older I get, the more I appreciate the differing views of others. In fact, if I find myself in a discussion with several people and all of us are agreeing, I will generally play devil’s advocate just to ensure we have more than one view.
Finally, I mentioned that Mr. Iacocca discusses politics (and the global economy) to a large extent in the book. He expresses considerable disgust for the current US administration and “do-nothing Congress”. While he makes the point that a CEO probably wouldn’t have the patience for being President, it made me wonder if the US would be better off if we just drafted people instead of electing them. What if we drafted the President from a pool of the CEO’s of the top 500 companies, and gave him/her a one-year term, then drafted another, then another? The same sort of principle could be used for determining Congressional leaders. Probably wouldn’t work, but I share Mr. Iacocca’s frustration with the way things have been going. His discussion of the political scene certainly provides numerous examples of how not to be an effective leader.
Iacocca isn’t the first person to criticize the US leadership, but I think the root problem lies elsewhere. To illustrate, I was among a group of co-workers a few days ago, listening to them complain about taxes. I tend to be the lone conservative in the group – everyone else I know here speaks in favor of more government, more spending, more regulation, etc. It was difficult for me to keep my mouth shut when all I wanted to say was “why do you continually vote for leaders and programs that will cost more and then complain when the bill comes due?” Assuming that this isn’t an isolated example, I’d say the problem lies with “we the people”.
Wisely said, capo. You remind us that the blame game gets us nowhere.