Pure Leadership Comes With A Huge Price.

Obstacles Can Change The Way We Lead

How does pure leadership mask its way through our lives?  Easy.  It just does.  It finds the path of least resistance and away we go.  Pure leadership is a commodity of character that is extremely rare.  Most of us have no idea how to practice it.  Yet, none of us truly believes we lack pure leadership in our management style.  I meet a lot of leaders in my business travels.  There has only been a handful of those leaders who truly met the accurate profile of pure leadership.  They are a rare commodity.

I work on that simple subject more than I work on anything else in my career.  I am a long way away from being one of those great leaders of pure principles.  I can think back, however, to remember those few leaders who have crossed my life path that carried the traits of pure leadership on a routine basis.  I can picture them in my mind.  I can remember great lessons I have learned from how they performed when the heat was on.  They possessed very special skills.  When it comes to the day to day routine characteristics, they did not appear to be anything greater than the very special leaders they are.  However, when a fire of problems suddenly hits the scene of action their special skills come directly to the surface and do the right things when the right things were needing to arrive...every time.  They practiced pure leadership.  It is fun to watch this occur when the test is the highest.  Pure leadership works best when nothing else will.  Only a few leaders understand what it takes to practice this art.  Unfortunately, most of the pseudo leaders in this world believe they have arrived with pure leadership all sewn up and in the bag.  Not true.  Most leaders lack what it takes to own pure leadership in their style of play.  It is a clear cut subject with a lot of gray surroundings on this truth.  Most leaders will deny that they do not possess the deeper traits that come standard in the characteristics of a pure leader.

Pure leadership, it is an altogether different animal.  On a day to day basis, pure leaders are not usually very much fun to share time with.  They do not especially make very good "happy go lucky" friends.  Pure leaders are not especially casual about producing friendship traits.  Friendship is properly recognized as one of the things that gets in the way of pure leadership decisions.  Pure leaders refuse to play favorites.  They seem to be strong enough to ignore those tainted tugs.  Most of the pure leaders I have met did not possess the most friendly day to day characteristics.  If I wanted to go out with some friends and have some fun on any given evening, those pure leaders were not especially the ones I first thought about when I invited my friends to join me.  Yet if I was stranded on a sinking ship in the ocean, they would be the first people I would invite to help me save our way.  Pure leadership is composed from a combination of disciplines that produce a completely different series of human traits than what we commonly see in most human beings.  That is why it is so rare.  None of my friends practice pure leadership.  I like them.  They are my friends.  They do not possess pure leadership disciplines.  I have a mentor who does possess pure leadership disciplines.  He is not my friend.  Not really.

I once had a friend become my boss when his business model became troubled to manage.  He asked me to join his model and help him fix how it was going wrong.  We talked about what I would be asked to do, how I would be performing my help and how he would share his leadership with the rest of the people who make up the organization he built.  We had some very deep discussions about the potentials we might experience when I came aboard.  He set up an evening meeting with his wife and children to discuss the roles each of us would be playing to help his model repair where it was wounded.  It was an uncomfortable session.  It was clear that his business challenges were deeply rooted inside that room of people.  Shortly after the meetings he and I shared and that evening session with his family, I came to one simple conclusion.  If I accept this position to help this owner re-direct his business model to become more successful, I would need to accept also that our friendship just got erased from the face of this earth.  The two relationships are not the same thing.  Pure leadership and friendship are not the same thing.  They are opposites.

In order for me to be as effective as was necessary to help right what was going wrong I would need to be removed from my friendship ties.  I would need to turn on my best pure leadership skills.  Without that approach I know our efforts would eventually deliver much of the same kinds of results they were already producing.  More trouble would remain.  I did not want to produce those kinds of results.  He did not ask me to join his business model to produce more of those kinds of same effects.  When we came back together after meeting the family he and I both discussed how our friendship would be removed.  It was a heavy conversation between two guys as friends.  I took the job.  He accepted my role.  Pure leadership comes with a huge price.

We did fix all of the fires he was managing and his model did turn the corner and win.  It grew faster than it had ever grown which produced new challenges that did not once exist.  The family felt more entitled to receive than it had ever once expressed in the past.  Their desire to consume some of the increasing profits was an insatiable desire that began to grow out of control.  It became problematic.  The once clear promise he and i made to each other of maintaining clear lines as to "who drives what" eventually broke down.  The owner became cornered by the pressures of this new set of family challenges that he became confused with who and what was more important to him and his future.  As his confusion increased, his pure leadership suffered.  One day we both sat at a small coffee shop and looked directly into each others eyes.  I tapped him on the top of his hand and we said good bye.  My work in that organization was over.  Our friendship was completely gone, his was confused and in a state of loss.  We accomplished the business plans we had originally planned to do.  We were not confused at what it would cost.  Pure leadership comes with a huge price.

His business was why I was hired to help.  Our mission was clear.  His family would not be my responsibility.  That was something he needed to do all by himself.  We fixed the business model.  That was the whole reason why I was hired.  It was time for me to exit and time for him to go to work on the family matters that were burning out of control.  His future was no longer my responsibility.  We parted friends for the last time.  That was almost ten years ago.  I have only seen him on brief crossings two other times since that coffee shop parting.  Pure leadership comes with a huge price.

Good Leadership Helps Profits Find Their Way

It takes a lot of courage to tell the truth when the truth hurts the most.  Not everyone can perform this troubling act.  I have come to recognize that not very many people have this ability.  In fact, it is very rare.  Most of us gloss over the truth just enough to make it more acceptable to deliver or accept.  We live our lives inside the long lines of 'kind-of-truths' just enough to remain tolerable to those we care the most about.  It never seems wrong to deliver half truths in our relationship patterns.  We operate most of our relationship lives in this kind of mode.  Most of us have come to recognize that there is a very fine line between being courageously honest and being stupid.  I have often discovered this simple truth.  We hate crossing that line.  It is a tough thing to juggle some times.  This is exactly where the pure leaders and the 'also-rans' get separated.  Pure leaders perform the simple act of pure leadership without any worry about what cost they may need to endure.  That is the key reason why they do not make great friends.

Any business owner who hires people and serves customers has discovered this bumpy set of rules.  They can tell a few stories about how these things have come back to bite them.  Pure leadership is all about learning how to identify when and where the differences in these kinds of patterns will try to live.  Knowing where it tries to live will go a long way to help the owner work to discover where they prefer to operate.  Leadership traits are an ongoing process that holds a lot of unknowns in the relationships we desire to build.  Pure leadership clears that air.  It clears that confusion.  Pure leadership already knows where the relationships will turn out.  Often times, that is not a very friendly process to achieve.

My friend and I already knew what kind of agreement we were facing about our long term relationship well before we agreed to carry it out.  It was not a confusing thing.  We did not try to 'trick' ourselves into believing something else.  We knew exactly what our cost would be.  We knew exactly what our work would require.  We knew exactly where our relationship would end up.  Pure leadership carries no extra baggage.  Only modified leadership permits situation driven extras.  It is a tough thing to accept but very important to know when the differences have arrived.  Every single business owner will eventually find out how difficult this pattern of leadership development becomes very real on the trail they walk to operate for success.  Leadership confusion will always be a challenging process.

I cannot define a perfect pattern for anyone to follow.  The success a business produces is sometimes as unpredictable as anyone can define.  The wide range of leadership skills performed to make business success happen is all over the board.  No one way is the 'right' way.  However, pure leadership is a clear path.  It is the most sacrificial pattern any leader can decide to endure.  Any owner who becomes determined to become a pure leader will discover this truth.  The rest of us will compromise along the way.  Pure leadership comes with a huge price.  Some of us are not ready to pony up that cost.

I know a ton of business models that are consistently successful without a pure leader leading the way.  I see how they win and how they lose.  Good leadership is near the top of their business model pile, even though pure leadership may be absent.  If you own a business or you lead one, you are the only one who must determine where your allegiance will fall.  I respect the pure leaders I have met.  I do not respect the terrible leaders I have met.  I can promise you that most of the terrible leaders I have met often times come with the most friends.  It is an interesting set of discoveries.  Do not become overwhelmed with being someones best friend.  That might be the best way to destroy your leadership efforts.

I profess how important relationships are to the success a business model will enjoy.  I do not advocate that we need to make a lot of friends.  That process is an altogether different animal.  Relationships and friendships can become completely different things.  Know the difference in your leadership moves.  The price you will pay is hugely different.

Until next time...