Spaghetti Leadership - Part 1

Where others voluntarily follow you.

General Patton once said “leadership is like a piece of spaghetti, you don’t push on it you get out and pull”

Leaders who lead by example gain so much respect they needn’t do much else for others to want to voluntarily follow them.

Amazingly, leadership has little to do with what a leader does, as long as it’s in the apparent interest of their followers. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, just in the interest of their followers.

Leaders do not have to get everyone to follow them. It could be a small project team or as large a group as a nation.

Leaders will always have their dissenters - those who oppose them and would never follow that leader. Just look at the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain and the Republican and Democrat parties in America. Party line voting, often based not on whether it’s good or bad for the citizenry, the job for which they were put into office, but instead on who the party follows.

In the big scheme of things, to become and stay a leader, one must recognize these inextricable facts of leadership.

Not all will follow

Concentrate on those who will follow, spending little time on those who won’t other than keeping your finger on their pulse.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” Tsun Tsu

Leaders “earn” the right to lead

Mistakenly, those in senior positions, whether in commerce or politics often believe their “title” has earned them the right to lead. Today’s trend of entitlement is a classic example of this.

This is an apparency. Power and position often result in obligatory followship, but not respect.

Think of the leaders of the nation in which you live. They may be called the President, Prime Minister, or Vice Chancellor, however did you voluntarily follow and think of them as your leader when you did not vote for them?

Leaders are not universally loved

Another mistake made by many a manager or chief executive. Working hard on gaining the love and admiration of those in their charge.

Admiration is gained by action or predisposition.

Action. This is what is needed to earn admiration. Seeing is believing.

Predisposition. Third party endorsement from an admired or valued source.

However, in both cases, admiration is short lived if the leader does not live up to the followers’ expectations of the leader.

Leaders must continue to deliver

We see this with many US Presidents job approval ratings.

President B. Obama when he took office in January 2009 had a 67% job approval rating. 2 years later this had slipped 25% to 48%. (1)

President G. Bush in January 2005 had a job approval rating of 52% and this slid to 28% to 37% by January 2007. (2)

Even John F. Kennedy who 74% of Americans believe will go down in history as an outstanding or above average President had his leadership falter. During his brief 3-year term, taking office in 1961 his job approval rating was 72%. When an assassin’s bullet took his life in 1963, it had slid 19% to 58%. (3)

Leaders are seldom saints

George Washington, the first President of the United States of America inherited 123 slaves at the age of 11. In 1799 he left directions for the emancipation of all his slaves upon the death of his wife, Martha Washington, even though the Virginia Legislature had 17 years earlier in 1782, made it legal for slave holders to manumit (free) their slaves. (4)

In more recent years, a demonstration of people’s opinions of leaders bears out the fact that “bad boys” oftentimes seem to increase and not decrease in approval.

Case in point: In what might seem like a paradoxical twist, President Clinton’s mean job approval jumped to an average of 63.8% during his impeachment hearings over the Lewinsky revelations, 10 points above his overall administration to that date.

Seems to point out that as a leader, your followers expect you to do a certain job. If that’s being done, they will forgive your improprieties elsewhere and for many, this impropriety acts as a catalyst of further followship.

Source materials:

(1) https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx

(2) https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx

(3) https://historyinpieces.com/research/jfks-presidential-approval-ratings

(4) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1121963/slaves-owned-by-us-presidents/

More to come in Part’s 2, 3 & 4 - Spaghetti Leadership Stay tuned