Category: Not being Steve Jobs

Leadership isn’t about the leader, it’s about the ship

(This is the first in several posts about authentic leadership)

How can I be an authentic leader?

This is probably the question I get asked more than any other on leadership development programmes.

How can I adopt all these leadership behaviours you’re telling me about, act motivated when I feel deflated, pretend to support positions and decisions I don’t agree with, and at the same time call myself an “authentic” leader?

The thing is, it’s the wrong question to ask because “authenticity” isn’t the point.

Leaders who worry about being “authentic” are putting themselves in the centre and forgetting that leadership isn’t about them: leadership is about influencing and inspiring other people (other people who are our social equals and who shouldn’t have to put up with our crap) to do something.

The day you become a leader, it becomes about them

Jack Welch

Or to put it in a potentially brilliant (or potentially confusing) way: leadership isn’t about the leader, it’s about the ship.

So “authentic” is only good if it helps us influence and inspire others, it’s not necessarily good in itself.

In Venn diagram form:

This means that Person A is a poor leader despite being authentic.

They are unprofessional, quite possibly self-indulgent, and as they mistakenly seem to think we have to put with aspects of their “authentic self” which are unhelpful to leadership.

They are probably mistakenly thinking they are the star of the show and that leadership is all about them.

This approach might have some success when leading a cult, especially when backed up with a high level of competence (Steve Jobs maybe?), but it’s at best clumsy and exclusive (Donald Trump maybe?), most usually it’s ineffective and disrespectful.

Continue reading “Leadership isn’t about the leader, it’s about the ship” →

Rather long mixed-up list of ten golden rules for presentations

I’m pulling together the presentation for an event I’m speaking at next week, and I’m starting to struggle, and so to keep myself amused, I put together this rather long and mixed-up list of golden rules for presentations:

1. PowerPoint is not a presentation

PowerPoint is a useful tool, but it is not the presentation itself.

It might form part of the presentation: showing visuals, capturing points, keeping the agenda clear etc. – but the presentation is, in approximate order of importance:

  • Your objective(s) (what do you want the audience to do/think as a consequence of your presentation?)
  • The audience (who are these people?)
  • The content (what is the story you want to tell?)
  • The presenter (who are you, what’s your style?)
  • The environment (where will this happen, what are the pros and cons of that?)
  • What tools can I use (not just PowerPoint, but anything else that would help me achieve my objective with this audience in this location …?)
  • How can I amplify this by making noise on other channels (Social media etc.)

That puts PowerPoint – a tool – in second-to-last spot, although I just made that list up with minimal thought, so it could be in the wrong order.

Continue reading “Rather long mixed-up list of ten golden rules for presentations” →