A few nights ago I attended one of the finest tech networking events in the solar system and showed up with 100 Connector Cookies in hand. While appearing to be deluxe fortune cookies on the outside, you must not be fooled. A connection cookie may be consumed and enjoyed much like a fortune cookie, but offers a far greater fortune than the amorphous clichés that we expect; Connector Cookies offer a conversation with someone you’ve likely never met before. To be clear, the cookie does not contain the stranger. What it does contain is a light conversation-starter to get the wheels turning when you meet someone at a bus stop, in a morgue, or at a networking event and find yourself with nothing other than the weather to discuss.
And so, as I was haranguing new entrants to this wonderful event with a tray of Connector Cookies to choose from, I would guide them in the use of these delectable discussion starters, usually departing quickly in search of a new victim, but occasionally I’d linger longer and overhear the beginning of a fresh conversation as it got off the ground.
While you may rightly assume the questions contained in Connector Cookies are a proprietary secret held tighter than how Willy Wonka makes his Everlasting Gobstopper, I will let you, my trusted reader, in on one of them:
In a group, what role do you typically play?
And in this one particular moment I heard a sharply-dressed, entrepreneurially minded person say, “I’m a leader if someone asks me to be.”
Hold. The. Phone.
A leader if someone asks me to be is a bizarre (and extraordinarily broken) way to think about being a leader, a relic reeking of our industrial-schooling complex: prep for the test, be ready when chosen, comply.
I’ve worked with groups of all shapes and sizes, and designed multiple leadership development programs. Leadership is such a popular, murky, and lucrative topic because there’s no definition of what makes a leader a leader. It’s extremely amorphous and in its wide & reckless use we see how unclear the definition really is.
Her Majesty Taylor Swift attended the Superbowl to show her support for Travis Kelce and the Chiefs, and a reputable publication calls her very presence an important lesson in leadership.
During the talks in the networking event where this saga began, a COO of a respected tech company said, “leaders set the standard, model the standard, and hold you accountable to the standard.” Henry Ford would love this.
And during another presenter’s talk, good ol’ mass distractor Colin Powell had his moment to shine with an old quote: “Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
If I were to bring my Alien Anthropology to this event I’d be utterly confused. In the course of two hours, I’d heard this “leadership” concept applied to helping soldiers with problems, being a standard-driver, showing up to football games, and stepping into the role when someone asks you to.
So what the hell are we talking about? I’m certainly not going to solve it in this post, but the more I work in this area the more something becomes clear: you can certainly learn a repertoire of skills that help in the day-to-day life of being a manager, but pinning down “leader” is like pinning down “love” or “consciousness”. You know it when you’re in it, it can give you a general direction, but conjuring a solid definition is like pinning jello to a wall.
Despite all this, we can at least knock a few things off the list of what leadership does not look like and even though the full list is pretty much ∞ long and we’re not really achieving much by knocking off one or two points, I’ve got to provide you with something helpful otherwise you’ll curse me for being at this point in the post and having received nothing. You’ll report me to the Internet and I’ll be given a hefty fine and maybe even community service or jail time. I don’t want that.
Returning to our poor friend who’d just had an elaborate fortune cookie foisted upon him and was trying to figure out what it all meant, we can be sure of this: leadership is not about waiting to be asked to be the leader, and then-and-only-then being the leader.
The act of asking someone to “be the leader” is quite possibly a brilliant example of delegation from the actual leader. While, yes, if we return to that quote about modeling and upholding standards which would put a smile on Henry Ford’s decomposed face, leadership isn’t only about taking initiative, about being the first one to jump – but I’d say that’s an extremely important part of it.
In the absence of any certainty, with others around you, are you able to be that first person to leap? This is why people talk about vulnerability as a leadership skill – you may make a complete fool of yourself by taking this leap. But, you’ve taken the leap.
As a final note, what I actually detected from this person was an undercurrent that curses this problem of WTF Is Leadership: the leader is the favoured person in the group, the hero. It’s the right role to be in a group, and somehow shameful if you’re not that person. But this is untrue by definition; too many leaders leads to chaos. There are other excellent things to be, other wonderful roles to play. This guy who gave the answer about being the leader when asked proceeded to say how he’s often the idea-contributor within the group, and I thought, that’s a pretty good thing to be.
An answer I’d be surprised to ever hear to my cookie question is: I’m the idea person if someone asks me to be.