“Actually, caring about the other person is the leverage in any conversation.” – Gary Vaynerchuk
Have a clear Vision. Do what you love. Now, go and do what is necessary to make your glorious Vision a reality. Sounds so simple! Sounds so cliché. Not so much……
It takes a lot of ‘hustle’ and serious staying power to fully unleash your inherent Leadership potential and to overcome several obstacles that appear on your path. Several opinions and definitions exist in terms of what Leadership really is. Within a modern context, considering factors such as generational gaps, differences in upbringing and schooling, political interference, technological advances, and market disruptions I will define leadership as:
“Continuously applying the required and adaptive skill set, to unite a diverse group of people in committed and sustained effort, with the aim to attain a collective Vision that they sincerely aspire to.
In reflecting on this statement concepts such as self-development, emotional intelligence, honing your craft, wisdom, building a sustainable culture of success, a high level of motivation and several other factors are cast under the spotlight.
‘Leadership hustle’ refers to the concept of analysing with great care what needs to be done as a Leader, then carefully deciding how it needs to be done, be willing to ‘pivot’ when things are not working, create a sustainable motivating climate, and then persevere with an extreme high level of commitment until your team realises your collective vision. If you are a true Leader this ‘hustle’ never stops. A critical part of your work as a Leader is to coach and create more Leaders in order to ensure a sustainable future for your business.
The ‘last trump’ has blown on supposed Leaders whom only use bonusses or disciplinary action as leverage to entice their team members to perform. People, generally speaking, want to feel that they are cared for and that they are working together to attain something higher than themselves.
A twenty-eight-year-old friend of mine recently stated that: “It is so not cool to Lead”. He was giving a voice to his perception of power hungry and self-serving leaders whom do not care for others. There are always individuals whose actions are not exemplary. Well, let me tell everyone of something that is very cool – First-hand experience of an individual or team that have unleashed their potential and now are masters of their craft and you had something to do with it as their leader/a leader.
As the abovementioned Gary Vaynerchuk quote alludes to – “Actually caring for the other person is the leverage in any conversation.” Leaders must sincerely care for their team members, if not they are just ‘ bosses’ that suck every ounce of energy out of their team members in order to be enriched.
The Author has heard a number of entrepreneurs complain that they have lost their businesses by caring too much for their employees and doing too much for them at the dire cost of their businesses and themselves in person. Their situations became untenable as according to them their team members performance did not even remotely match the effort of the entrepreneurs.
In part many challenges similar to the above example arise as a result of a transactional style of Leadership – “I do for you and you do for me”. Naturally even if no lip service is paid to the concept , there is, in most cases part of the Leader/Entrepreneurs’ consciousness that does expect something in return.
For the purposes of this article the concept of ‘Leadership Hustle’ moves in the opposite direction of a transactional style of Leadership, instead it fosters a collective consciousness and culture where the team jointly as servants of a higher vision do everything because they want to out of love for the cause as opposed to being forced to.
This puts a demand on the team Leader to hire ‘the right people’ that are committed to the cause from the start. Easier said than done? Most certainly! The Leader would have to Hustle up! We as Leaders will have to be committed enough to learn through several mistakes until the most optimal HR model is created that serves our Vision. We would have to continuously and urgently refine our team selection, training processes, and positive feedback loops until we find the solution that offers us the best change to collectively attain our aspiring Vision.
The ‘People before profit culture’ strikes fear in the hearts of most Leaders and rightfully so. What if I focus so much on caring for people that our profits decrease dramatically?! Allow me to rephrase the statement –
‘The right people (doing the right things) before profit culture’ will ensure more profits in the long run than you could ever have foretold.
‘Leadership hustle’ does not mean I foreclose on all methods of control as a Leader, stop managing, and only Lead. ‘Hustle’ means that we as Leaders must put more focus on Leadership than management controls which in turn would make the daily management of our teams easier because as a result of the focus on Leadership we will generally deal with a more inspired, motivated, and engaged workforce.
Seeing Leadership as an ever-evolving journey of learning and adapting rather than a single event would save the reader an unmeasurable amount of frustration and failures. Whether we appreciate change or not it is being enforced upon us by, in part, the millennial generations’ general traits of being more entrepreneurial, being very inquisitive and challenging, and basically living online.
It will serve Leaders well to rather gain wisdom in terms of the varying needs of different generations within a single workforce as opposed to judging a certain generation to be more effective at work than the other. Caring for people means caring for all, and part of caring is being interested enough to understand them better.
The author was in the audience when Cliff Hazell, an agile coach at Spotify, delivered a guest speech at the 2016 African Lean management conference. During the Q&A session Cliff was asked how we should best engage the “millennial segment” of our workforce as Spotify is well known for its very modern, integrated, and very successful culture.
The first part of Cliffs’ answer was, at least to me, simple yet profound – “First of all you could start by stopping to call them Millennials!”
People in general are progressively starting to abhor labelling and a judgemental attitude. It has served Spotify very well to rather focus on utilizing their generally younger workforces’ entrepreneurial thinking and inquisitiveness to gain traction towards the companies collective Vision as opposed to an attitude of labelling and judging.
A paradigm shift that forms part of ‘the Leadership hustle ‘is to rather have non- judgemental Learning discussions than the traditional performance appraisals. To sum up this modern approach to Leadership we are asked to continuously learn and improve our skills and be flexible in our application of skills. In order to create sustainable success as Leaders we have to have an improved grasp on the generational differences within our teams. We have to develop the skill to utilize the strong points of each generation and person within our teams to gain traction to ultimately actualizing our collective Vision.
We have to be more and more inspiring Leaders as opposed to being ‘control freaks’, that is if we sincerely aim to create a ‘HIGH TECH-HIGH TOUCH (People orientated) environment for our teams.
GO FORTH AND HUSTLE!!!