The age of conspicuous consumption, the transaction-accumulation age of the deal has culturally birthed the age of the empty suit, lost leaders in search of identities. Our societies and citizens are stuffed full of emptiness, and too many leaders are largely unknowable, distant and unaware. Leaders have become as good as the deal they strike, the payoff they receive, the package they negotiate. Actions, even lives, are crafted on alters of cosmic vending machines in hopes of many happy returns. In all this phenomenal success, meaning is more marginalized, purpose more diminished. Integrity was not on the shelf as often or priced as cheaply before the age of the deal. It is now rare to find someone who has not been infected, a leader who is the proud owner of everything that cannot be bought, a soul who is not for sale. The flawless leader has rejected the seductions that 1) people are objects, 2) control trumps trust, and 3) identity is based in accomplishment. An unfortunate side effect of our quid pro quo culture is the commoditization of our integrity.

Objectification

Studies tell us the shelf life of the average CEO is less than four years. Integrity priced too cheaply and made too widely available is too often the culprit. The primary symptom of bread-and-milk integrity pricing is leaders viewing people as the means to their ends and not ends in and of themselves. Viewing people as means is equivalent to viewing them as objects, not equals. Objectifying people is rampant in our societies and is a projection of low self worth and self-hate. The narcissistic CEO who objectifies others as means to their ends typically suffers from self-hate and low self-esteem. People with high self worth do not prostitute themselves or others so easily.

Control

Between the rooms of fear and faith there is the door of choice. On that door is the doorknob of control. Our affinity for control locks us in fear, separated from the possibility of a powerful life of faith. Control is the enemy of trust. Trust is not the answer to everything, but for relationship to occur it is essential. Leadership is relationship. Leaders who believe control trumps trust tend to be isolated micromanagers, devoid of depth, and lacking powerful relationships. Control is often necessary and effective in organizations and societies, but it’s often misapplied to leadership. Flawless leaders sequester control in favor of trust in relationships.

Identity

We are human-beings not human-doings. If you are what you do, then when you don’t you aren’t. Accomplishment is important – hey, we need to get stuff done, but it is not who we are. Who you are is your answer to the question of life. It is the only appropriate answer to every question we face, especially the tough ones. What you do flows from who you are. The age of the deal has glorified competence over identity. We now have empty suits that can condescendingly execute complex tasks, but have no idea who they are or what is right and what is wrong. Our ethics and morality have been summarily sacrificed on the alters of our missing identities.

Flawless leaders have struggled with the wrenching question, “What will I do in this life with no expectation of a return?” They can discuss the question, “Who am I” without talking about where they work and what they do. The solidity of their identity creates depth in their relationships, synchronized convergent effort by willing followers, emblazoned service to worthy purpose, and a sense of deep-water satisfaction that is lacking in the kiddie pools full of empty suits.

The 76 million baby-boomer Americans born between 1946 and 1964 are poised to flood the retirement market this decade. As they exit stage left, the dramatic drop in birth rates from one generation to the next will create a resounding thud. The 46 million Americans that form generation X not only have big shoes to fill – they have too many shoes to fill. The demographic reality of having about 40% less leaders to fill vacant leadership positions during the next decade is more than just cause for concern. More disconcerting still is the realization that many retiring leaders will unknowingly do everything in their power to cripple their successors.

When the workaholic-boomer leaders who fell in line, toed the line, colored in the lines, and epitomized the long grey line reluctantly hand over the baton to the savvy, pragmatic, nomadic, outside-the-box gen-x-rs who reactively hate everything to do with lines, the resulting clash of the titans could send your business careening.

The boomer generation gave the world some of the best leaders of all time. Most current senior corporate leaders are boomers. While their standards and strengths provided unparalleled growth and success, their generational preferences concerning autocracy and structure will undoubtedly contribute to transition conflict in this coming decade. There are without question many leaders that will navigate the shift in power magnificently, but our observations from working with leaders for over twenty years lead us to conclude that a significant percentage of leaders will unwittingly hamper effective leader transitions. Due to culturally reinforced behaviors, we forecast that a majority of boomer-leaders leaving the job market over the next ten years will reflexively employ at least one of the following Crippling Factors:

1. Scarce Power – viewing power as a scarce resource will cause unnecessary delays in the transfer of that power and subsequently cause organization stutters.
2. Light Switch – assuming the transfer of power must happen all at once – in one moment – will limit successor learning and organization effectiveness.
3. Short Leash –micromanage successors with unnecessary life support and who will manage them when you pull the plug?
4. Sink or Swim – throwing successors in shark tanks without access to your wise counsel is petulant and a breach of trust.
5. Fence Sit – considering gen-x successors on probation until you are emotionally prepared to leave, fosters an indecisive and distrustful relationship that leads to hobbling manipulation.
6. Plastic Perfection – valuing image over honesty will saddle your organization with lackluster leaders that culturally force cosmetic compliance instead of facilitate authentic commitment.
7. Meaningless Motion – the age of putting in your time to make the grade has ended – harnessing your successor with obsolete rules and paradigms may cause them to go elsewhere in a hurry.
8. Tried and True – beleaguering successors in skeptical conversations where you embody the answer and they embody the question contradicts inherent equality.

US corporate leader transitions promise to be one of the biggest economic obstacles in the upcoming decade. Organizational redesign might be a small component of the solution, but the foundational breakthrough resides in managing the relationship and processes between leader and successor. Organizations must act expeditiously to plan and foster productive leader transitions, or find something believable on which to blame their future ineptitude.

Productive transitions for key leaders and officers will only be well facilitated through powerful coaching. Unfortunately, most executive coaching does not empower leaders to self-navigate their own transformation. Structures and processes must be established, but the benefits of well-placed wisdom by a trusted advisor can never be under estimated. The book, Leaving Prisons: Release Your Trapped Value, was designed to serve as a compass for leaders navigating this territory. It details many of the intricate connections between organizational change and personal change while supporting leaders as they assess and shift their thinking and behavior with conscious choice.

W.H. Auden said in The Age of Anxiety, “We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.” The impending leader transitions are organization changes, and all organization change begins with personal change. Regardless of the situation, there is always a correlating personal transformation that enables leaders to propel their organizations toward the desired future. When that personal change is ignored, the organization follows the leader into a prison of oblivious rigidity, crippling its ability to achieve dreams and objectives. The immovable reality is that if our existing leaders do not effectively change themselves, the looming transitions of the next decade will cripple organizational potential and possibility.

Scarce Power. Lord Acton’s 1887 dictum still applies to leaders today, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The viewpoint that power is a scarce resource is a symptom of the dangerous belief that leaders should be judged by a different standard, that they are above the common folk. Leaders who selfishly stockpile power create disempowered organizations and build weak relationships that are disconnected, disrespectful and dysfunctional. Hierarchical position, coercion and adoration give a false sense of pseudo-power, and collude together to support the lie that power is to be hoarded. The reality is that power comes to those who bring others power. Power comes to those who bring hope. Creating power and hope in others are inherently foundational responsibilities of leadership. Power comes not to those to whom others have surrendered. Power comes to those who have surrendered to a greater purpose.

To successfully transition, leaders must incrementally share power over time with successors. Collaborative leadership is required: a leadership that reflexively partners, shares and cooperates. This is a pronounced shift in thinking and behavior for many leaders, but the payoffs will prevent major hiccups in upcoming transitions.

Light Switch. We worked with a corporate President who was planning on retiring in two years. He had selected his replacement and wanted us to work with him to “get him ready.” He also told us up front that he would not let his successor know about the plan until the last minute – he intended to announce his retirement and his successor simultaneously as he walked out the door. We declined on this leader light switch project and later heard the planned successor became disillusioned and took a top job with a competitor.

Transition, at its best is a complex relationship, and relationships take time – most organizations would do well to jettison the light switch theory. It is founded on a belief that leadership is a position. It is not a position; leadership is a social capacity that is only powerful when shared. Leaders become more powerful when they empower others through realizing that leadership is not about them, it is about the purpose and people they serve. When leadership is about you, you are at risk in defining your life by your defects. Leaders saying things like, “that is just the way I am,” “you’ll have to get used to me,” “it’s just like me to be…” and “give me the benefit of the doubt” are probably inept at leader transition and blinded by their excessive narcissism.

Short Leash. Much of our observations have shown that micromanagers, wielders of the short leash, do so out of distrust and fearful self-protection. The scary downside is that leader self-protection hardly ever aligns with leaders’ ethical mandate as fiduciaries: organization protection. One execution-guru CEO we worked with was so controlled by distrust and self-protection that while he was perfecting results at his mammoth company, his wife of twenty-eight years left him for the landscaper that cut the grass of what is now his former home. Through working with us, this CEO realized that his propensity to develop short leash relationships had infused distrust and betrayal in all his relationships. We found excessive internal theft, anemic innovation, and prevailing adversarial attitudes toward management throughout his company. Of the three people he had earmarked as potential successors, the two most desirable were about to negotiate job offers with other firms. His own short leash effectively hamstrung and hung out to dry this CEO.

Short leashes occur when unplanned organizations collide with dysfunctional transitioning leaders. Effective transitions are the simple sequence of key processes. Responsible organizations plan retirements with leaders in advance while successors are groomed and evaluated constantly. As a result of this planning, successors should be selected, promoted and announced as much as eight to twenty-four months prior to a leader’s leaving depending on the size and nature of the organization. After the planning and selection processes, the transition process takes place during the time when both leader and successor share the job, the power, and learn from each other. It is a mentoring time for the leader and a stretching time for the successor. When these processes are effectively in place and appropriate intervention, monitoring, and coaching are applied, transitions propel institutions to new heights of success.

Sink or Swim. The sink or swim strategy is fundamentally flawed in that it presupposes isolation and individuality. Most corporate leaders talk about collaboration and connectedness as mandates for success, yet they encourage disconnected sink-or-swim tactics with successors. Leadership is inherently lonely stuff, but the red flag of sink or swim signals the trapping of value. Tossing successors in the shark tank is a sign of independence driven relationship avoidance. Without relationship there can be no leadership. The best one can hope for in such a circumstance is the thin productivity of cosmetic compliance.

Leadership is ultimately and consummately a relationship, a connection between people. Leadership does not rest in a position; it rests in followers’ convergence. If people follow you, you are leading. Leadership is dependent on people. Leaders do not lead results, profits, outcomes, property, production, or anything else – they will always and only ever lead people. Leadership is also dependent on voluntary relationship, for followers must actually want to follow. So when leaders use sink or swim succession tactics, we know they are aspiring to lead from a distance, and we know they are trapping value and will cripple their successor.

Fence Sit. Leader indecisiveness is a symptom of the illogical feelings of worthlessness. These emotionally stunted feelings and hesitations form cholesterol-like organization bottlenecks and strangle successor effectiveness. To vacillate and consider successors on probation until you are able to tolerate the emotional discomfort associated with transition constitutes an immature betrayal of your replacement and your organization. Successors that spend time with fence sitting leaders, report that they feel distrusted, confused and demeaned. These are relational projections from leaders fighting the deep tumult of worthlessness and infecting newly appointed leaders. Manipulation and dishonesty typically govern the relationships between leader and successor in situations like this.

Fence sitters don’t realize that abdicating choice is a choice in and of itself. When they fully realize that by avoiding decisions they are adversely decisive, they not only face their fears but also potentially feel free to make alternative choices. It is this courageous freedom that releases trapped value in themselves and their organization. Transition takes time and doubt is the enemy of time. Fence sitters need deadlines, but more importantly they need doubt-coaching throughout the transition process; the selection decision they made previously is usually still valid despite their current feelings.

Plastic Perfection. Successful transitions require authenticity. Your successor and your organization need you to be real in order to harvest the data required for leadership continuity. Valuing image over honesty will saddle your organization with lackluster bosses that culturally coerce instead of facilitate authentic commitment and engagement. The biggest root cause to the plastic leader’s problems is that successors never get to know them; inheritors intuitively sense you are covering up something and they know better than to trust that. The plastic leader’s prison cell is their outer shell. People never get close enough to form relationships, so transition is tenuous at best.

For the transitioning leader, being always transcends that which appears to be: appearance. Successors sense the difference. Transition is the time to clear out the closets of skeletons, discuss the undiscussables, and disclose the secrets. Authenticity is scary because it requires that we speak of our own disingenuousness and hypocrisy. While this is uncomfortable and rare for leaders, do it anyway – it works. Leaders are not without defect, and exposing and discussing your obvious errors authentically shows that you are honest and can be trusted. Being authentic is the embodiment of truth, and truth is indiscriminant to and inconvenient for appearances. Truth invites scrutiny, and for successors, truth is a platform for future success.

Meaningless Motion. A retiring Group President we were coaching was in deep conflict with her gen-x successor over the rewarding of empty effort. The heir-apparent leader was annoyed by how much time was spent making sure people were in certain places at certain times as opposed to managing results and outcomes. The soon to retire leader was patiently and condescendingly extolling to her successor the supposedly self-evident mandate to manage meaningless motion. After talking with them for a while, I asked for a break and took the President aside.

We knew each other well and we talked about how her replacement just wasn’t getting it. We also talked about how the world is much different now and that new perspectives were required to create a better future. We landed together on the thought that as a mentor, it was time for her to hand over even more control and to reflect and offer advise on the fresh thinking she hears. She called me later that month and said she was now living by a new standard of wisdom for herself, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

It’s easy to say the world has changed, but it is an entirely different thing to live through it. The times have shifted. What worked in the past worked well, but indications are that it might not work that well in the future. The age of putting in your time to make the grade has ended, and unknowingly harnessing your successor with obsolete rules and paradigms could potentially derail them and your institution. Whether leaders are forcing antiquated time and space mandates or they are busy pushing outmoded standards of urgency and meaningless motion, transition is a time to look at life reflectively and harvest the choicest fruits to empower your replacement.

Forgoing adequate observation and reflection, leaders sometimes chose inactionable, purposeless direction. To deflect attention from their ignorance further, they employ urgency. Urgency captures attention through anxiety and creates propped-up popularity, but is often light on substance and staying power. Urgency without purpose is a defense against identity and meaning. Too often leaders appear as empty bobbling heads, urgently whining about the next faddish flurry of asinine commotion. Successful successors and accomplished organizations will be aided by your reflection and generative conversation. Resist the temptation to colonially reinforce outdated ideas that will merely detract from your legacy.

Tried and True. Transitioning leaders must challenge their thinking about people. How we view people matters. The tyrant views people as a means to their ends; conversely, the honorable leader views people as ends in and of themselves. If human equality is holy, then elitist exploitation of people is evil. The way in which you view people inexorably infects your leadership. Beleaguering your successor’s brilliance with skepticism in one-way conversations where you embody the answer and they embody the question contradicts your inherent equality.

That which was tried and true worked for you. You are not your successor. Moreover, they are your equal. Humility will always be the bedrock essence of leadership. However strenuously we strive for importance, leaders themselves are not nearly as relevant as those they serve, and during transition you are called to serve your successor. Countermanding requisite humility is the fact that most leaders remain constantly in search of their own significance, and are thus chained to illogical, unarticulated fantasies of being God. Your past accomplishments are an evanescent support of self-pertinence. In transition, your self-importance is irrelevant. The platform you help create for your successor is of utmost importance.

The next decade in US corporate leadership will see unprecedented tempests and turmoil. The king pin position of world economic power will shift from the US to China. Interest rates will rise. US debt as a percentage of GDP will probably shatter the country’s financial standing in the world. Millions of Americans are now without jobs, and many of those jobs will not return. Technology advancements will most probably make all previous investment obsolete. Green standards, industries, and energies will disrupt business operations. Demographic shifts will crowd the retirement market, create a resounding vacuum in leadership jobs, and strain an already struggling health care system. During all these and many more challenges, most corporations will transition virtually all top leadership positions. If leadership transition is not part of your strategy, it might end up being part of your epitaph.

Leaders that create an elite aura disserve followers. The elitist attitude in leadership says to all followers that “I am better than you, hence I should lead you.” It is a mental state of ascendency that leads to domination, control, tyranny, extortion, and abuse of the community and society. History has clearly shown us numerous times that the elite leader has great capacity for tyranny and dehumanizing leadership. Elitism is obsolete and must be eliminated in order for authentic leadership to flourish.

After more than two centuries, the US has created a somewhat free and equal society that is fairly distinct in the world, although still infected with aristocratic domination and elitism in areas and pockets throughout. When America declared its independence from the British Empire and won its liberty and status through war, it separated from a monarchy and would for years strive to live distinctly different from monarchy, ensuring free speech, freedom of religion, right for all citizens to bear arms, etc.

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States of America said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have…I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.” Jefferson was a liberal, secular humanist, however, today, this thinking would be considered fairly right wing.

Through only 200 years, a few generations, Americans have allowed elitism to creep back into leadership and now our free speech has been limited to certain “free speech zones”: areas set aside in public places for the exercise of free speech in the US. The US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law… abridging… the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The US Constitution was circumvented by the US Courts: the existence of free speech zones is based on U.S. court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression. These free speech zones stem from decisions within the last fifty years, but were not extensively utilized and enforced until the last 2 decades, coincidently and arguably with a noticeably higher rise in elitism in Governmental leadership.

Over the last fifty years Americans have also seen limitations on their religious freedom: mandatory teaching of evolution theory in public schools and the elimination and denigration of creation, elimination of prayer in public schools, and the shift in mindset that the US Constitution guarantees the freedom from religion, where it was always only originally intended to guarantee the freedom to be religious.

The last several decades in America have seen numerous challenges to individual’s rights to own firearms. Rights for Americans in this area have been severely limited by state and local governments and are yet another symptom in a long line of the sickness called elitism in leadership.

Elitism is paternalistic, coercive, extortive, and monarchical. It says, “let me control your life because you are not wise enough to do so.” It is not democratic. If human equality is holy, elitism is evil. Elitism is definitely not an American original. It says that all are not equal. It is the harbinger of tyranny and slavery and human abuse. And after only two centuries, the American congress looks more elite than the British parliament that it rebelled against. The extreme debates and diatribes in which the British parliament and its Prime Minister currently engage make the American congress and President look like the elite, polished puppets that they are. Congressmen cannot even challenge the President out loud when the President lies in a public speech without receiving censure. Thomas Jefferson and his arguing, impolite, brilliant compatriots are reeling in their graves. Freedom no longer rings in America, the elite have silenced the bell. If these comments from an American Democrat irritate you, you have probably been infected with the disease of elitism.

Authentic humility will always be the bedrock essence of a flawless leader. However strenuously we strive for relevance, we are rarely really relevant. It is high time leaders not only accept this but also embrace it. Embracing irrelevance is a holy reverence for the equality of all humans. Most leaders are constantly in search of their own relevance and thus are chained to illogical and unarticulated fantasies of being God. They think they should lead because they are “the best choice for the job;” because they have been “appointed.” When we embody the paradigm of constant relevance we repel followers because they sense our need to be dominant, however covert our condescension may be. Our past accomplishments and accolades shallowly support our self-pertinence. Leading and following are intensely “present-time” sensitive. Followers disregard past track records once they are with you in the moment’s current affliction. In our present anxiety, our past triumphs melt feverishly into triviality. Flawless leaders reject continuous relevance because they have chosen a lifelong submission to authentic service and meaningful purpose.

Immature children think of themselves; mature adults think of others. A tyrant views other people as beneath him; a community member views others as equals; a servant views other people as more esteemed than her. Pretentiousness repels; authenticity attracts. Only the strong become servants because they have mastered the illogical instability of self-supremacy. The servant is merely the mature, periodic and loving master of the ever-present inner-tyrant. Psychologists tell us that we carry with us our inner child. It is the manner in which we carry that child that makes all the difference. It is the flawless leaders that lovingly accept their inner instabilities, yet still guide themselves to a life of significance through surrendering to worthy purpose. Flawless leaders do not major on the minor issues. Flawless leaders are able to create strong bonds with followers through appropriate vulnerability. These relationships of deep strength and connectedness form the invisible infrastructure that propels the flawless leader’s organization toward meaningful success. There are correlations between leadership ability and organization outcomes. The extreme organizational power that is released from leaders’ embracing their irrelevance is another symptom of the necessary and deep work that occurs on the path of the flawless leader.

In what ways does your undercover elitism limit possibilities within the organization you serve?

Managers operate in the relatively easy content area of what needs to be done and measured –that which can be easily seen. Leaders operate in the motivational human behavioral areas of Why are we doing this? What is meaningful? Who am I? Do I matter? Do I want to struggle and commit? Do I need to share my power with this group? –the areas which are unseen, or at best a shadow.

Leadership is easily ignored because it deals with the invisible. Is leadership real or is it a shadow? Is the shadow of leadership more substantial or meaningful than the content of what is actually being accomplished? When leadership is relegated to the easily ignored warm and fuzzy arena, what is lost? In reacting to these questions, we create our approach to leadership –our collective behaviors: the part of us with which others live.

When it comes to leadership, the unseen is more important that the seen. Bad attitudes, low motivation, poor cooperation, ulterior motives, etc. ruin organizations of any and all types, yet we cannot see them and they cannot be measured well. These are the results of flawed leadership and these are the areas that really irritate the measuring managers.

When I ask CEOs, “What behavior changes are required from your leaders to bring long-term success to your organization?” Their answers are never around measurement or execution because those are such shallow and short-term skills. They are usually about the immensely difficult areas of collaboration, communication, coordination, relationship, and motivation. These are all concept areas that cannot be seen –the invisible.

When will we stop wasting time on the shallow stuff and get into the deep waters of flawless leadership? What are your defenses against leading –that which prevents you from tackling the difficult stuff? What does it take for you to work in the shadows of authentic leadership?

The most painful poison to the leader is isolation. The antidote to isolation is not to surround one’s self with people, for a person can often still feel lonely in a crowd. The cure is in submitting to authentic relationship. Relationship is severely misunderstood. Relationship is the dynamic attachment or connection between two or more people. Physicist Fritof Capra said that it was impossible to measure a relationship. Love is the apex of relationship, and many would naturally agree that love cannot be measured. Independence is the opposite of relationship, and yet independence is part of what makes one a leader. This common leader infection of independence-driven relationship avoidance creates isolation. And it is impossible to lead effectively in exile. At the core of love and relationship is a healthy dependence, a willful limiting, a mutual submission, a selfless service, a lavish generosity, a happy incompatibility. Relationship is the flawless leader’s quintessential task, not the worship of avarice and ambition. To flawlessly lead, leaders must do what they fight intensely to avoid: surrender, in mutually submitting trusting relationships.

What is your successful surrender? What is your powerfully influential submission? What isolation is limiting your relationships? How would your closest friends describe your relationship building acumen?

There is a naturally occurring scintillation with the question “are leaders born or made?” This is a distant cousin to: which came first, the chicken or the egg? I have been asked many times, in what way is leadership created: birth or teaching? Do we try to hire them or grow them?

This question usually comes from our desire to manipulate others and our insecurity in our own freedom and identity. Either we want to assemble a cadre of loyal effective leaders in the same way we select cuts of beef from a butcher’s meat locker, or we are wondering if we personally have “the stuff” of which leaders are made, or, perhaps we are perplexed as to whether an ineffective leader with whom we are interacting will ever become effective. Despite our accompanying cadre of dysfunctions, these are still valid concerns stemming from appropriate anxieties.

Leaders are not born. Get over it. There is no Santa Clause. Get over that one too. Yes, some of us have a greater natural predisposition to leadership, but the behaviors must be learned. What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Kings were “born” to kings and throughout history, the misplaced hope for a great king was hit or miss; mostly miss. Leader-birth theory and practice doesn’t hold water; it only holds together the weakest form of hierarchy called patriarchy. Wishing leaders to be born is the wish for someone else to come solve my problems; it is the wish to live vicariously through someone else’s life because living my own life is too painful; it is a defense against personal power, freedom, and accountability. Please stop it. Live your life, not the life of others.

Yes, you have “the stuff”, the raw materials, of which leaders are made. Yes, you are trapping value in your life and the lives of those around you through your ineffective behavioral patterns and assumptions. So, the lifelong axiom “you have it and you’re either hiding or misusing it” is one we all would be better off embracing for the long haul. Yes, you will increase effectiveness faster by changing yourself rather than attempting to force change on others. Yes, others probably realize your weaknesses faster than you do, so listening non-defensively would help you. And yes, the best way to learn how to help other struggling leaders is to learn how to help yourself.

So, leaders are not born, and you are a leader. Now get this: leaders are not made either. Trying to make someone else into anything is futile. Manipulation of others is a defense against living your own life fully. Stop trying to change others; start changing yourself. People don’t want you to change them, and you do not want others to change you. These are inherently free human beings we are talking about, not hunks of clay you get to mold. You can no sooner hold back the tide. You will do better molding yourself through your choices, and even better when you stop trying so hard to stop trying so hard. People are not means to your end; they are ends in and of themselves. Don’t bitch that there are waves in the ocean; choose to enjoy navigating them. Land here: leaders cannot be made or taught; leaders learn. The question whether leaders are born or made is a weak question. A better question would be “in what ways do leaders learn enhanced behaviors? This question challenges the thin teacher-centric presupposition that “we” have what “they” need. This question gives life to powerful possibility divorced from invasive audacity. The best work we can do in this regard is to embrace our irrelevance and facilitate the learning of leaders. We cannot be the oracle for anyone else but ourselves. Create a hospitable and stimulating environment that optimizes their growth much as you would create a well-cultivated garden. You don’t get a flower to grow by pulling on it; you don’t grow leaders through conventional teaching methodology. Encourage them. Don’t micromanage them. Let them lead. Don’t teach them; facilitate their learning.

Many times I find organizations stumbling around this unarticulated strategy regarding leaders: “train the trainable if the desirable are unavailable”. These two assumingly separate strategies actually form one effective strategy when combined. Find the best talent you can because it’s almost always cheaper and faster than growing it. Continually develop all the talent you have and you have a chance at keeping the best of them. The problem is we assume that means teaching. Please resist the urge to teach. The problem with teaching leadership is that leaders naturally resist unrequested instruction. Teaching is invasive input. Learning is sustainable output. Learning is self-chosen, life-changing growth. Teaching is the attempt at shallow, coercive, cosmetic compliance. Learning is self-inflicted change. Change is the painful path to growth and blessing. All enduring change and learning involves choice, discomfort, vision, and movement. All organizational change is preceded by authentic personal change. Leadership cannot be taught. Leadership is learned. Learning is a leader’s lifelong journey. It only ends when we do. If learning ends early, so do we. It is helpful to grapple with this question: what am I choosing to learn? It might be even more helpful to struggle within a similar question: what learning do I prefer to avoid?

William Butler Yeats asked “how can one tell the dancer from the dance?” Great question. Leadership is not position or results. Leadership is identity and action. Leadership is not transaction and manipulation. Leadership is relationship. The quality of leadership is not dependant on outcomes, execution, or results. Better litmus tests would be the level of voluntary follower engagement, the extent of coordinated and convergent effort, or the increment of synergistic cooperation among followers. Managers love to measure and deconstruct things. Most managers are better measurers than they are leaders. For many managers, measurement is meaning, but for many others measurement has dangerously eclipsed meaning. It is threatening and irritating for those who depend on measurement for meaning and identity when they run into things that defy measurement. It is tempting and self-protective to say that those immeasurable things are not meaningful. This trap of measurement-dependent significance dilutes life. Regarding the measurement of leadership, I offer a contrary thought: to measure leadership is to dilute and confuse it. We would be tempted to say the same thing about love. We easily assume that we cannot measure the power and extent of love. At times, love, relationship, and even leadership seem to defy logic. Physicist Fritjof Capra said that it was impossible to measure a relationship. In fact, the ability to measure something does not dictate its reality (contrary to some managers’ assumptions). Love and relationship are more real than a quarter’s profits. Hence, an unhealthy obsession with measurement displaces the immeasurable value of unquantifiable things such as relationship, love, identity, and leadership. I believe that leadership cannot be measured effectively. And that’s OK. Somehow you will survive. Leadership is both who you are and what you do. So, who are you? And, what defines you?

Truth embraces scrutiny. Truth is not manufactured or manipulated. You do not help truth by protecting it. Truth is open and vulnerable. Truth is not created; your awakening reveals it. Managed truth is hidden truth, more hidden to the one who manages it. Truth cannot be trapped and does lend itself well to be controlled. Truth is not part of your kingdom, not a subject in control. Truth does not live in a box you created, to be removed when convenient. Truth pierces your soul. Truth brings regenerative pain and change. Flawless leaders do not waste time managing truth, they commit to aligning their lives with it. Is truth the fire in which you burn or the waves upon which you sail?

Truth is not easily allowed in organizations. Avoiding truth’s pain and manipulating others to think, “we are who we pretend to be” are strong unspoken values. In organizations, we collude with hidden forces that counter truth. We all nod nonverbally, “Yes” around the table and the leader assumes that agreement is commitment. (Not!) No one speaks up and disagrees so the leader assumes that everyone is on her page. (Think again!) We are not physically absent; we “put in our time” so the leader assumes that we are productive. (Not even close!) We attend the right meetings, listen in on the right conference calls, copy the appropriate people on the right emails, and daily apply a thin coat of cosmetic compliance. Faux-followers do all these things to defend against truth, accountability, independent thought, clearly articulated opinion, emotional maturity, and clarified commitment. Most leaders encourage follower acquiescence, but disguise it with the cloak of “execution”. Thus they trap value within their organizations, accepting disengaged behaviors in the midst of their own meaningless motion.

Flawless leaders would beg to differ, and beg you to differ with them. Flawless leaders value and invite disagreement. They find safety in dispute. They praise and empower resistance. Flawless leaders have learned that dissent is not divisive – it actually engenders commitment. Flawless leaders embrace challenge and opposing opinion as interesting and significant; they feel less accurate without adequate objection and protest. When followers are not comfortable speaking their disruptive opinions and healthy debate is absent, flawless leaders reflexively know that trust is low and effectiveness is in jeopardy. Flawless leaders look at their followers as the first line of defense in protecting themselves and the larger organization from their leadership mistakes and misdirection. In the absence of truth, followers become incompetent drones hopelessly careening near the misbegotten leaders they look to blame when things go awry. Flawless leaders value the fully engaged commitment that can only come from truthful freethinking debate.

What are your reflex reactions to disagreement and dissent? In what ways do you try forcing compliance and execution? How well are you aligned with truth?

Leaders often choose blindness to unseen matters. Consciously or unconsciously, that which is not task accomplishment is too often ignored. Years ago, when I was contemplating a key strategic move in my own organization, a trusted advisor asked me why I was hesitant to operate in the world of the unseen, “God operates there; why shouldn’t you?” This feedback helped to expose my unhelpful assumptions (which I was unconsciously choosing) that would have eventually reduce my firm’s value. Since then, I have found the same advice applies extensively to leadership. Leaders often avoid the unseen.

There are many layers of the human system in which we lead: the most blatant is the content – the “what” we are working on, the area where most leaders start and most get stuck. Some leaders multi-task and also work on the process, the “how” we are working together. This applies to both the content and the efficiency and effectiveness of the human system, the extent to which we optimally interrelate. Still, another layer of leadership is the level of paradigm, the basis for action and reaction, the “why” we do what we do and how we do it. Discerning, understanding, and leading paradigms are “career critical” for flawless leaders. Paradigms cannot be seen, and like the eighty percent of the iceberg that is beneath the surface, they comprise the vast majority of the arena for leadership. Paradigms give us clues to the various meanings and purposes that resonate in followers. Flawless leaders are not blind. They see the entire arena of leadership, including the normally unseen areas. Flawless leaders help to give sight to the blind by articulating the unseen, yet important. Flawless leaders do not allow task execution to eclipse their full leadership calling and responsibility.

In a large company’s lunch area I overheard two employees talking about an ambitious Vice President, Howard. One employee asked the other, “Do you know what the difference between Howard and God is?” The other, obviously in on the joke, replied, “Yes, God doesn’t think He’s Howard.” I instantly recognized Howard’s classic leader flaw: unknowingly trapping value through blind ambition. Our ambition to be significant and relevant can be our most limiting factor as a leader. In learning to reject blind ambition, flawless leaders embrace their irrelevance by submission to worthy purpose. Consequently they appear endearing, not arrogant. People are drawn to them instead of repelled away from them. And they engender full engagement instead of witty quips behind their backs in the break room. Flawless leaders are living proof that real leadership is not commerce and compromise but deep relationship and meaningful service.

There are unending ways in which we all limit our potential and trap the release of our value in the world, but leaders commonly default-choose failure like Howard did, by opting for self-protection wrapped in ambition. For leaders to avoid certain failure, the trick is they must do that which they strive so strenuously against: surrender. Leaders fail when they refuse to surrender to purpose, for what they haven’t learned is that surrender is more powerful than conquest. Conquest alone cannot bring significance; only contribution offers the possibility of significance. Conquest takes; contribution gives. Conquest destroys; contribution creates. There is always a lavish generosity resulting from a leader’s powerful surrender to meaningful purpose. The question with which flawless leaders must wrestle constantly is “what purpose is worthy of my surrender?”