In high-performance and competitive sports, it is often stated that one’s ability to perform at the highest levels is in direct proportion to their ability to withstand pain and discomfort. For if you cannot get comfortable in the zone of discomfort, you will not be able to push yourself to the greatness you desire. And this includes the training you do before the competition, as well as in the actual event itself. The cliché holds, the more you sweat in training, the better you perform in competition.

Leadership does take work. And it should. If you aspire to be a leader, you ought to treat leadership as a craft, you ought to become a student of it, and you ought to work at it. And if you're not willing to work at it, well, you get what you give.

Douglas Conant

Leadership is no different as your ability to lead is in direct proportion to your ability to withstand uncertainty and the disbelievers and distractors that you pick up along the way. Leadership is about the constancy of purpose that you demonstrate as others belittle and deprecate your ideas and vision and the resilience you have in the face of the unpredictable nature of dealing with people, ideas and challenges. And like in sports and competitions, there is the preparation that one can do before stepping into the leadership space and work that one can continue to do that supports the leadership service you undertake. The work that you do preparing for real leadership interaction maybe even more important than what you do when you are actually in it.

It is interesting that most people who watch professional sports often only see the performance at the game, event, or match. And for some, they only see the highlight reel. Most people don’t see the hours of work and effort behind the scenes that the players and coaches put in. You don’t witness the strength and conditioning sessions, the physical therapy, the playbook study, the game film review, the meetings, discussions, or skill work.  And you often don’t see the practices either, the community events or most of the media interviews. What most people see in professional or high-calibre sports is just the tip of the iceberg of the time and effort people put into their craft and to be prepared to perform during “game time.”

And leadership is no different. Those that are the best of leaders invest a tremendous amount of time and energy studying their craft, reading the books, developing the models, and understanding human psychology and physiology. The best leaders learn from great leaders (modern and historical), have personal boards of directors to bounce ideas off of, and subscribe to news feeds that feed their curiosity and thought processes. They talk to people, they take classes, and they deconstruct successful strategies so that they can understand what works and what does not. The best of leaders have studied themselves, analyzed their tendencies and have modified their behaviours to be more capable and more productive as coaches, guides and leaders. And like the best of professional sports, most people don’t see the effort that goes into being a great leader. Most people don’t know the toil, the sweat or the sacrifice that the great leader applies outside of “work” so that they may be useful at the moment.

Management is an art based on strategy and execution.  Leadership is a craft based upon philosophy and transformation.

Vinay Rastogi

It is not correct to say that great leaders are inauthentic because they are prepared, no. It’s the opposite. Great leaders want to provide the most extraordinary service to their team that they can; they understand that leadership is a privilege, and they are driven by a desire to fulfill that honour. The best of leaders spend countless hours thinking about how to be the best leader they can be because they believe that is what their team deserves. And then these leaders spend even more countless hours preparing to be that leader. They do not merely leave their leadership of others to chance; they prepare like every day is a game day. This is what a professional leader does versus an amateur one; they prepare for every interaction and every opportunity as a chance to raise the game of others and to impact them most positively.

However, those leaders that are merely charismatic and good people people but who fail to study leadership and hone their craft are often uncovered as being superficial, inauthentic and lacking the depth of character to be great leaders. This unveiling may not always happen as their charisma can usually take them far, but if you want a fair assessment of these people, simply ask a few of those people that worked for them. They may be great at managing upwards and friendly to those beneath them, but they also often lack a depth of capability that many people can see through and easily identify. These people are often more concerned about their own title, rank or progression rather than truly understanding the needs of the team and delivering the leadership needed to elevate the team’s performance. These leaders are often arrogant and condescending, more concerned about themselves rather than the development of their people.

In contrast, great leaders are focused solely on their people and what the team truly needs in general and specifically from their leadership. That is not to say that great leaders are blind to the mission or objective that the organization and team has. No, great leaders are very clear on the vision, the purpose, or the aim that needs to be achieved. Great leaders know, however, that the accomplishment of these objectives is a result of the efforts of their team. So their energies are put into making their team better and more able to accomplish the mission assigned to them. These leaders spend time breaking down the larger objective into smaller goals or tasks, teaching others the skills they need to be successful and coaching even others how to raise their own game.

The truly great leaders are not afraid of conflict as they often see it as a sign for an opportunity to better align or clarify the goals. Nor are these leaders intimidated by the need to correctively counsel performance or behaviours that are detrimental to team performance and the accomplishment of the stated objectives. The best of leaders see this type of feedback as something they are simply in temporary possession of. They hold this feedback on behalf of the individual who actually “owns” it and the leader simply provides visibility into the feedback so that the person can then action it appropriately. The greatest leaders do this because they care about their teammates. They are truly inspired by the development of others and helping team members become the most significant examples of themselves that they can be. And any coaching, feedback, counselling and support that the leader can provide that helps their colleague get better, achieve their full potential and contribute in the greatest way possible is something they are willing to do. Not because they have to, but because they care so deeply for the individual that they want to do it.  

A leader takes people where they want to go.   A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

Rosalynn Carter

And because great leaders care so deeply for their people and want to help their people uncover their greatest talents and capability is why they spend so much time and energy honing their craft of leadership. This deep caring is what drives them to study human psychology, physiology, neurology, and sociology. It is why they feel the need to read the ideas of thought leaders about human performance. And it is why they seemingly consume everything there is on personal growth, development, leadership, management, and human performance. These leaders are driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge, not to be seen as better than others, but to better others. And this work and this study help give these leaders the tools to help make others better with every interaction they are blessed to have.

The motivation for and of their leadership is a key to discover when developing insight about a leader’s intention. And this intention can be viewed as being somewhere along a continuum between malicious intent (or personally driven) and noble intent (or others/service-driven). Whereas malicious leadership intent is typically associated with either denigrating others to raise one’s own profile or self-importance, or directly harming others, noble intended leadership is all about the importance of the team member and raising their capability. Noble leadership focuses on the significance of the team and the team member as the vehicle and process through which the team’s goals, objectives or mission is accomplished. Noble leadership coaches ever higher and ever upward performance both as an individual and as a team as a cohesive unit. Noble leaders understand that the locus of the team’s success, and therefore their own, is with the team and the individual team members themselves. And with this realization, the greatest leaders invest in themselves to be even better leaders themselves, because their team is counting on them to be.

To become a great leader is to examine the intentions of your leadership and then move them towards the noble end of the continuum. Your reflections should include an examination of your worthiness to lead and why you think others should be led by you in the first place. You can then contemplate whether you have developed enough skills, knowledge and capability that helps the team achieve its goals and whether you can confidently help team members become the best version of themselves and unleash their fullest potential. Your team deserves the best possible leader, not the best possible leader that you can be, but the best possible, period. And if you are unwilling, or uninspired to do the work necessary to become this leader, maybe the leadership of others is not for you. Challenge yourself to be more. Learn from the world-class athletes that we see perform regularly and do the work that few people see so you can achieve the results and rewards that even fewer ever will attain.