Knowing When the Lights are Off (a Leadership Style)

While I do believe that trust and authenticity are essential in any leadership situation this particular extract from Tomasz Tunguz's great article Authenticity In Leadership triggered my imagination:

Each leader has a different leadership style. Some ebullient storytellers, bellowing a goosebump-inducing vision on stage to enrapture their teams. More understated leaders from behind laud the accomplishments of their teams, using other voices to captivate.

And here I am contributing to the leadership style conversation:

When was the last time you realised that nobody noticed the lights were off?

The other day I had a meeting with my boss. Amongst other things we talked management, leadership, and how we observe our environment... or not.

It reminded me of that moment back in uni when I realised what leadership meant to me. It wasn't about managing egos, influencing people or organising resources but about observing, seeing what others didn't and taking action to make a difference.

Here's how my leadership revelation occurred...

Picture this: Our lecturer was late. I was sitting in a classroom, chatting away. A murmur of frustration started to rise about how dim the room was. I was so used to hearing people talk about how ageing the building was, it's lack of warmth or fading paint, that I didn't pay attention until I became irritated by the now increasing comments.

I wasn't bothered by the dim ambiance (I like intimate) but I had to do something for my own peace of mind. And it didn't take long to look around, locate the light switch, stand up, walk across the room and action it before hearing the empowering whisper of satisfaction flowing through the room.

It made me wonder: why, in a group of 40 students, were a good third of them complaining, and the vast majority silently agreeing - while many of them just ignored the switch? Changing the situation was actually so easy!

The good news is we are all leaders when it matters to us.

When it matters to us, we can all take ownership and go the extra mile. The difference is both in the mundane everyday part of life, and in what we do in the long-run. How do we keep feeling, keep looking and go beyond the obvious again and again?

When I shared this insightful event with my recent boss, I realised that how I had perceived the event was only half the story. He gave me a different perspective when he reacted to my story, with a grin and said, simply [...]

Read the rest of this post, in context, and the article that inspired it here