The Leadership Paradox

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.”

― Ronald Reagan

I’ve been fortunate recently to be asked to join a group of 10 CEO’s from around the country. We meet via video once a month for three hours to discuss what it means to be a great leader. As we delve into what the primary role of the leader should be, an interesting paradox appears.

The paradox is that the fundamental role of a CEO/leader is to make themselves unnecessary. Wait? What… unnecessary you say? How could one ever think the supposedly most important position in an organization should be or could be unnecessary? And this is precisely where the paradox occurs.

In this age where big time charismatic CEO’s get massive coverage for their breathtaking business decisions, both good and bad, how can anyone make a valid claim they should make themselves unnecessary? Fair enough, let’s look at some of the tell tail signs of what great leaders do:

• They’re had by a cause. The passion around that cause allows great leaders to set the direction of where the organization wants to go. They’ll pursue it relentlessly in good times and bad because,,, ‘they have to’. Their passion doesn’t allow for any other options.

• They find people who have a passion for the same cause. Each of these people will do it for their own reasons, not the leaders, but they all have their sights set on accomplishing the same thing.

• Great leaders hire people smarter than themselves. They’re not intimidated by people smarter than they are. Quite the opposite, they know the only way to accomplish great things is to surround themselves with people with different perspectives, experiences and intellect than themselves.

• They set clear expectations and then get out of the way. Great leaders delegate responsibility and authority to others. What do ‘A’ players want? They want a challenge with the authority to act on those challenges without having to get permission first. Great leaders create a culture where the strategic distribution of the ownership of problems is how the organization functions at every level.

If you take some time to think about these points can you see how, if implemented well, the CEO can become unnecessary? Unnecessary in the fact that he or she isn’t needed every hour of every day. In fact, and here’s where the paradox is, great leaders should be able to absent for extended periods of time with everything running without a hitch. Unnecessary.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Schutz, the former CEO of Porsche. He said he once had a line worker at Porsche ask him why he was necessary. The employee said he thought all the ‘suits’ did was receive big salaries while he and his coworkers were the ones making the cars and generating the company’s revenue. He didn’t see what value Peter and his executives brought to the company. I thought his answer was very revealing of a great leader. He told the employee he was right, for the short term. He said if Porsche couldn’t run without them for a month or three months or even a year they weren’t doing their job well. But then he asked; “What about three years from now? Or five? Will we still be building the same cars then with the same technology? Will the market for the types of cars we build still be the same or will tastes change?” He went on with more questions like these but I think you get the idea. He completely understood that if the company couldn’t run without the top leadership for the short to intermediate term he hadn’t structured it correctly. The value of he and his executive team was to keep a close eye on “the winds of change” and how they could continually keep Porsche pointed in the right direction over the long term.

So the paradox is, if you’ve designed your organization well you should be able to go for extended periods of time without being needed. If you have competent, energized people at every position with the authority to make decisions and act in the best interest of the company the daily things will take care of themselves. However, how many companies are like this? Unfortunately way too few. So while unnecessary on a day-to-day basis a great leader is necessary to keep the train on the tracks. Without great leadership even the best company culture can degrade quickly. A great leader is aware of that and is constantly working to keep all the attributes listed above highest on his or her list of things to spend time on. Necessary.