The Leadership Paradox

Often, the best way to lead is to do things that very much do not look like leadership. Here’s the scenario:

You want to do something; more accurately, you want something done, so you start doing it. The thing in question is valuable and important, and you work hard on it directly. Your work, for whatever reason, is visible – and so people start wanting in. Maybe they’re inspired by the mission itself, or maybe they just admire the dedication with which you’re pursuing it. Maybe they just think you’re going to succeed and they want in on the reward. It doesn’t matter – what matters is that those people start asking how they can help.

And this is the paradox – in order to maximize on that situation, you have to break your own flow state. You have to get out of “the zone” and start figuring out how other people can help. You didn’t set out to be a leader, you just wanted some end goal. And now, suddenly, you have a team.

You can ignore it, of course – but that’s a squandered resource. And many people do it badly, losing their forward momentum because they switch too hard in the other direction, trying to build enduring bureaucracy instead of just getting the minimum scaffolding set up to get the whole thing across the finish line. But if you get it right, not only does the thing get done, but you get to celebrate it with a whole squad.

That crucial first ingredient – just going for it yourself because you want it done – is missed by a lot of people who want to lead. They try to lead before they try to just do. But in the same way that you can’t write a love letter before you know who you love and you can’t get an application ready before you know what the job is, you can’t lead a team before you know why they’re assembling in the first place.

If you really want to be a leader, go out and start with your team of one, doing something worth following.