Leadership a Leader Is Who

Leadership

A Leader Is Who You Are

The Scenario

It had been a quiet night, up to about 2am when an 911 dispatcher rang our station and said a middle aged man had a vein laceration in his thigh, losing blood fast. As the only paramedic unit on, we were immediately dispatched. When we arrived, the house was in chaos. The husband and wife had been arguing, and in a fit of rage the man had went to kick a trash can and accidentally slipped on it, the metal searing a varicose vein in his left leg. Blood was everywhere. The fight between the husband and wife raged on as we tried to get to this man, stop the bleeding, and get him in the ambulance. Trying to reason with them was just making it worse. The fight was about money -- not having $60 for their kid's band uniform. They were poor, you could tell from looking around their small house, cramped with things, three kids crying in the corner, terrified as their dad's leg would not stop bleeding. I looked at those kids, my heart sank and I told myself "this is no way to go through a childhood! Do something!" I took out sixty bucks from my wallet, threw it on the floor in another room and asked the kids if they knew whose money it was. I did it for the kids so we could get their dad out of there and save his life. The mother immediately ran into the room and saw the money, picked it up and then starting crying uncontrollably. This created enough of a diversion so our team could get a tourniquet on the husband, get him on a stretcher and get out of there. It turned out the husband had several varicose veins in that leg and if the cut had been just one more inch longer, it could have lacerated his main artery in that leg.

A Leader Is Who You Are

As I reflected on that specific situation, it occurred to me that a leader is who you are and a manager is what you do. That's not to say a manager is any less important. But to be an effective leader one must choose to live a life of authenticity, transparency, honesty service to others above yourself, and above all, serve and sacrifice for those who you lead. Leadership is best seen not with the leader at the top of a pyramid of influence or importance, but with their teams, customers, patients, and support staff. A truly transformational leader will sacrifice far more of themselves than they expect their teams to, setting an example in behaviors not just words (Camps, Rodriguez, 423). A transformational leader is one that also strives to be authentic, real, worthy of trust, transparent (Hur, van den Berg, Wilderom, 591). Transformational leaders also have an innate ability to size up a situation and using emotional intelligence (EI) devise strategies for getting the best possible performance from their teams (Smith, 44). These are the attributes of the ideal leader to me, and above all of these is what I believe to be the most important fact of all: a leader is who you are, daily, hourly, good or bad mood, energetic or tired. A true leader has these values reverberating in them like a strong, resonating chord of music. Transformational leadership also has the ability to put a vision out in front of any type of reward, making it possible to motivate entire teams by what they can achieve (Pryor, Oyler, Humphreys, Toombs, 19). All of these factors are galvanized into a set of skills, which can be learned (Smith, 44) and must be honed over time with a continual focus on being a leader, not just doing leadership work. There is a huge difference in leaders who believe this and those that don't. Those that are the believers live it, and when it comes time to be an effective leader, it's as if the decisions they make and directions they choose come from reflex. I greatly respect and admire excellent leadership because it says so much about the sacrifices ones makes for one's team, customers, staff, and patients.

Comparison and Contrast of Leadership

An excellent leader is on a journey; there is no single moment when a manager suddenly becomes a leader, shifting their role automatically. The best leaders move through a progression of challenges and trials to attain a transformational level of performance (Camps, Rodriguez, 423). Comparing and contrasting leadership traits shows that the best values in a leader can takes years to develop.

Beginning with the most critical value of authenticity, leaders often hedge on this specific value because it means they can no longer be the single holder of confidential information or privileged data (Hur, van den Berg, Wilderom, 593). In fact they must become open to sharing the good and bad news with those that report to them if the entire team is going to stay in step, synchronized with each other over time. Leaders on the journey from managers often struggle with trusting their teams and subordinates with this data, fearful they will use it to either subvert the leader's authority of in some way undermine the teams' credibility. Contrasting this mindset with that of leaders who openly encourage and nurture trust with their teams, they confidently share information and gain trust in return. Authenticity leads to one of the most powerful contrasts there are with regard to leaders, and that is the ability to create trust through reciprocal sharing of all information (Hur, van den Berg, Wilderom, 593). This is such a critical, contrasting point of leadership that often entire companies miss the point and continue selectively sharing information (Pryor, Oyler, Humphreys, Toombs, 17). This practice can often result in a corresponding level of trust between subordinates and leaders, in addition to a continual second-guessing of what other information is being shared and why (Smith, 45). The most successful leaders see information and its distribution to trusted subordinates and team members as a means to generate greater trust and achieve authenticity and transparency. Given the widespread financial fraud, lack of accountability on insurance companies and massive scandals involving billions of dollars, we are in the most skeptical and mistrusting of times the U.S. has seen in decades, if ever. Yet what a powerful time to be a leader, freely sharing information and insight, looking to provide subordinates and team members with the support and guidance they need. Some have said there is a trust shortage today, yet the best antidote for that from a leadership standpoint is to be completely transparent and focused on how to make knowledge transfer seamless across your teams, organizations and companies (Camps, Rodriguez, 422).

In these skeptical, difficult times, the contrast of the ideal leader vs. what one can reasonably expect to achieve has never been starker. Yet in that wide contrast, there is so much room for exceptional leaders to emerge, providing the support, insight, intelligence and data their teams need to continually improving and growing over time. It is in that moment of when a leader decides to use their knowledge and expertise to set their teams up to win that true leadership emerges. In comparing my own skills on this attribute, I am on the journey to being a continually stronger leader. My passion is serving my team, enriching them, making them stronger, setting the foundation for them to transform into leaders too. While I am not at the level of total authenticity, I am on the way there, and keep focusing on the thought that a leader really is who you are, not just what you do.