The Mind of the Leader: How to Lead Yourself, Your People, and Your Organization for Extraordinary Result by Rasmus Hougaard & Jacqueline Carter

Author:Rasmus Hougaard & Jacqueline Carter [Hougaard, Rasmus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633693432
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

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Selfless Leadership

The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.”1 Selfless leadership is about being invisible. It’s about recognizing that leadership is not about you. Selfless leadership is about fundamentally understanding that your success is based on your ability to skillfully develop the potential of your people.

Selfless leadership requires restraint. It requires holding back from micromanaging people and processes. Non-action can be the most powerful action for a selfless leader. This is not to say that selfless leaders sit back and do nothing. Of course, a leader’s role is to provide vision, strategy, direction, and guidance. But for selfless leaders, it’s done in a much different way than traditional top-down, power-based management.

Selfless leadership starts with the ability to be fully present with your people and cultivate an environment of trust. In other words, it starts with the solid foundation of the M in MSC. With a platform of mindfulness, a selfless leader can coach and influence people by leveraging experience and knowledge. Selfless leadership is about having the wisdom to develop and grow your people so they can shine and thrive with your support. It’s about becoming a truly enabling leader who helps her or his people perform in ways that could not be achieved through direction and management.

As leaders, we must rise above the constant flow of activity and keep our larger goals in sight. We must move from our natural tendency to be effective managers toward becoming inspiring, engaging leaders. If we try to be involved in every detail, we become a bottleneck. Instead, we need to be a catalyst for energy flow. We do this by allowing others to do their jobs and enabling them to have a sense of meaning and purpose.

In this chapter, we’ll explain what we mean by selfless leadership and explore some of the benefits it offers. We’ll then examine some of the barriers to selfless leadership. Finally, we’ll look at the most important qualities you can develop to more selflessly—and effectively—lead your people.

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