Introduction

You are looking great. Seriously, have you been working out? Well, it so good to see you as you are amazing. Hey – can I get your opinion on a few things? I’ve got some ideas that I’d like to share and I’ve been told by others that you are a good person to ask about these ideas. Would that be ok?

I’ve got this idea that’s been on my mind for a while – I was thinking that you could write an instruction kit on how to be a good leader. Could you spare me 10 minutes to read what I have written and then let me know what you think? Amazing – thanks!

If you have got this far then I’ve succeed in implementing one of the key skills of a leader: manipulating your sense of importance to get you to do something. The chances are that you read the above and felt uncomfortable about the questions but there is also a chance, a good chance, that you read to the end as I made you feel important, that you mattered, that you were someone. This ability to influence others is just one of the steps that I’ll take you through to explain how you or anyone who can sense emotion, has courage, and can be happy with themselves can be not just a good leader but a great leader. I’ll teach you how to sense emotion, have courage etc – leadership can be taught and practised (all the great leaders have all practiced being a leader either deliberately or accidentally).

OK. So now you might be thinking “He’s already manipulated me once, how do I know he is not doing it again?” Brilliant question – a question you should ask when any stranger talks to you. The answer is: you don’t know, my intentions and your interpretations are invisible. In circumstances that are unclear you need to make two calculations: 1) what do I gain? 2) what do I lose?. These questions I can answer: 1) greater understanding on human behaviour that allows you to be a potential better person and leader (you need to be a good person to be a good leader but not to everyone) and 2) time it takes you to read this. In order to balance these two questions set yourself an amount of time you can spend and then review it after that or before if a condition is reached. That condition is boredom. Shall we say five minutes? Great – my friends were right – you are great.

Most leaders are rubbish and it’s not their fault

Like a bandaid let’s get to this straight away. Many leaders aren’t great at being a leader and the reason for that is they haven’t ever been taught how to be a leader. This includes those that proclaim themselves to be leaders perhaps a titan or titanides of industry wielding power in their corporations or those don’t-wanna-be leaders who find themselves at the front of a movement with followers they neither know and probably don’t even like.

The reason is that we have a massive misunderstanding of what leadership actual is. If you are reading this as a wanna-be exec in a corporation you may be here to learn how to get those pre-Olympian god powers to bend people to you will – sorry – corporate vision. You may be reading this as an exec-in-post but not power i.e. you’ve got the role but nah-got the stroll (a great phrase to highlight the difference being in power and having power) to learn how to survive in the power environments of leadership. You might be someone who has no interest in the power of a leader but the constructive influence they can have to make the world a better place through a greater level of niceness – love that. The tricky bit is that power and influence are only a small part of being an effective leader – I know – total bummer. Leadership is purely in the brain of people that you influence and you have little control on how that brain inteprets what you say.

In order to be a better leader you need to understand how people, or more precisely humans, work. The good news is that we are learning more and more about how individuals and groups of humans work every day. The bad news is that we have a problem with numbers. Understanding how a single person works can be straight forward – we can ask, probe, dissect, test etc to test an idea – this is biology. We can also look at large groups of people and see how they work – this is economics. The likely hood is that you will be working with more than one but not hundred people where the idea of a relationship becomes a challenge as you can’t related to the person. Most leaders are working directly with tops 20 persons. This matters when trying to be a good leader but I’ll cover off leadership at the group and societal scale (it will be interesting but perhaps not very relevant).

In order to be a good leader you need to know a few fundamental things. Think of these like instruction sets you get with furniture only the furniture is a human being, genus Homo, species sapien. From the outset it’s good to call out that although we are very similar to the great apes (organgutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and the bonobos) our abilities in speech, abstract reasoning, together with physiological differences in structure (stand-up right, bipedal, dextrous hands) mean we are unique in our complexity and our randomness.

This is where we start our journey on being a good leader. Appreciating who we are and how we work. The reason we start here is to set the foundation at we are our past and our present – no more, no less.

Note: The guide is designed so you can skip over bits that you find little boring but also follow along at a pace where if you want information you’ll find it either in the appendix or to research at your leisure.

1. Bricks, Pipes, and Places – building a person
2. I love you – I think (Emotions) – building an emotional person
3. Detection, Inspection, Relationship – building a relationship
4. – building a personality
5. – building a follower
6. – building a calling
7. – sustaining influencing
8. – losing direction
9. – becoming a legend
10. – passing

Three Types of Leader – how leadership is defined by followers not the other way around