I have been thinking a lot about leadership recently. We are in the process of onboarding a new team member aimed at becoming an integrator for ArrayFire.
We are also bringing onboard new team members to independently flesh out two new startup ideas. These new team members will be leaders of those ideas and the market investigation process needed to prove them out.
With these new leaders coming aboard, I feel the need to share thoughts on leadership and am looking for a particular leadership style that works well with me and with our culture.
In an EO Atlanta Chapter board strategy summit today, some slides on leadership were presented that caught my eye. First, leadership was defined as having two functions:
- inspiring trust
- getting results
Second, emphasis was given to a flat leadership style. I prefer to lead as a peer, rather than as a boss. In our business, the people on our team are tremendously qualified and talented and don’t need an “overseer” telling them what to do. It does not make sense to “boss” them around. Rather, in our context, leadership is designed to coordinate skills and foster direction and synergy (inspire trust) to make sure that we move as a team towards great things (getting results). In the slides today, emphasis was placed on leading from a position of influence not a position of power. It is more important to “follow” than to “lead.”
What are your thoughts on defining leadership as having those 2 functions?
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