“I will follow him, follow him wherever he may go. There isn’t an ocean too deep, a mountain so high it can keep me away.” -Peggy March 1963
What was in a man like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he could lead hundreds of unarmed citizens into a face off with a militarized and racist police force as in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama? Of course, it was that peculiar element called leadership, and if you had some of that, how would you use it to build, grow and lead your organization to success across all hurdles of growth which may be sure to come?
No. #1. Dr. King had a vision he could illustrate with words. He called it a dream. Leaders need to be seers.
“And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, August 28th 1963 at The March on Washington
What parts of this speech made you see something? What parts made you feel something? Did you get chills?
Before a leader can see and tell you about her vision, she has got to know what she wants and how she wants it. The core of it must be as crucial and meaningful as life itself. Your business may very well be the avenue through which you will serve your life’s gifts, perhaps the main purpose for you being alive and in existence in the first place. If it doesn’t move you, it will move no one else.
Once you have your vision together and can tell people about it, let it actually move you...like literally. You can not afford to wait for consensus before you move. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And at no other time will the saying, “Actions speaks louder than words.” will ring as true as in the beginning. Remember? You’re a leader, meaning you move first regardless of who is behind you. Let me tell you this, if you move with love, courage, ethical conviction and a clear direction, you will find followers flocking behind your leadership. If they see you are a man or a woman that is on the move to a destination they would like to go too and you seem to have a better idea of how to get there than they do, this is how you will pick up followers, not by sitting around asking for votes of confidence. If someone else had a better idea, a leadership role for that purpose would already be taken. “If not you, then who? If not now, then when?” -John Lewis. “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.” -Esther 4:14. Even Moses thought he was an unlikely selection for the role of deliverer to lead his people out from under the oppression of Egypt. The Bible describes that he stuttered and stammered in his speech. However, when you are called, and you will know this beyond a shadow of a doubt, you mustn’t second guess it. You must answer the call with action that says “Yes!”. As your numbers swell, it will have an exponential effect, but you must become your first follower. If you doubt yourself, any other follower behind you will doubt you too.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” -President John Quincy Adams
Whoever said that you are not supposed to be a leader? Get those voices out of your head. We are living in a time of desperate need of new leaders. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is now gone. He did all he could do within the space of his lifetime and has left a fine example. Now, who can he pass his baton to? Who can Malcolm X pass his to? Who can Rosa Parks pass hers to? Who can Mary McLeod Bethune pass hers to? Who can Dorothy Height pass hers to? Who can Fannie Lou Hamer pass her to? Who can Ella Baker pass hers to? Who can James Baldwin pass his to? Have they done all they could for naught or for a generation that can pick up their batons where they left off and take it further to the next level beyond their time and what they were able to do? They did it for us, just so that we could rise up as leaders in their stead. We owe it to them, and we owe it to generations coming behind us. Let us not be derelict in our responsibilities to the time we are living in now. We are their heirs. Let us then rise up and take our places. Leadership is your right and perhaps even your duty.
Leadership happens to be one of the G.O.L.D. principles of The Baldwin Project, LLC. It of course, represents “L”. Likewise, as leader, you should also have guiding principles. These will be your rules by which you will be the first subscriber. These principles will be the compass, pillar, standards and the backbone of your leadership. In uncertain times, people are in desperate search for something...anything to be sure of and count on. In dealing with you, let everyone always be sure of where you stand. If you are the founder, then by definition, you must become the foundation of your organization. To do that, you must stand on solid ground and be consistent. People will try to move you all the time to accommodate their whims, but you must stand your ground at least as far as your principles are concerned. When you decide not to compromise your principles for anything, not for any ploy for expediency nor even for your own convenience, let those who are denied their way call you stubborn. Let them watch you care. People are truly stubborn when they are obstinate for no good reason or out of spite or pettiness. Your reasons are your principles, and you should be ready to explain them at any necessary moment with a matter-of-factness which begs no permission. They are what they are. Don’t like’em? Tough! Deal with them or don’t deal with you at all. It is better to let anybody go before you let your principles go and weaken your leadership. Note that some of the world’s greatest leaders were charged with being stubborn, Mahatma Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Even Jesus would have been permitted to live if only he had renounced any part of his gospel which placed spiritual leadership back into the hands of the individual allowing for a personal relationship with The Divine without priestly or political interference. He had to be put to death for the sake of maintaining a man-made authority his doctrine undermined. But he didn’t flinch. If he had acquiesced, we would know nothing of his ministry 2000 years later. “Stand for something or fall for anything. Today’s mighty oak is yesterday’s nut that held its ground.” -Rosa Parks.
The best principles to choose to build your leadership upon are those which are aligned with the laws of nature such as justice, progress, truth, love and service. If nature has done fine by them for billions of years, I think you’ll fare well by them too. The next layer of principles can be the ethics, rules and values that you have lived by up to now and have served you well. They could be the rules and values that you were raised with that has helped you in adulthood, wherever they pertain to how you can do business successfully, make them your principles. It may not be necessary for you guide your business along so-called “Christian” values like Chick-Fil-A in a society that is diverse in faiths, yet some of those principles are universally applicable to business, work and customer service. Whenever they invite in the divisiveness of Christian dogma is when they end up in PR disasters. Whatever these principles should be for you and your business, write them down as part of your constitution of your organization. This nation began the same way with the ideals of liberty, justice and individual rights and still today they are the hallmarks of American culture. It is what has set us apart as a nation with no monarch but these lasting principles which allows for the rule of the people and the choices of the individual; self-governance. And yes, we do lose moral power and authority in the world when we fall short of our own ideals. Should you replicate the same error, you will lose power to govern your organization once earning the charge of hypocrite. Therefore, you must be self-ruled. You’ve got to walk the talk. “A man who conquers himself is mightier than the one conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.” -Buddha If you can live by your rules, anyone else can be expected to as well.
Not only in setting the standards for your business, your principles will become very useful when it comes to decision making. Great leaders are decisive. They reach decisions quickly and change them slowly, if at all. To be sure then that you are making the right decisions, it helps to have good principles to measure them against. If the option being considered appears to have more positive points than negative points yet violates any part of your principles, it is a no go, flat out, not to be considered further. If it presents more positive points than negative and aligns with your principles, make the decision to go for it and don’t turn back. Your principles then become your ultimate litmus test and compass for decision making and they don’t change, you are consistent. Your leadership then becomes something reliable.
The point about walking the talk then brings us to another important principle which is setting the example, not only in your organization, but in your industry. You not only want to have a business, you want to have a leading business, and you can have that when you have sound principles that you have effectively been able to lead your entire organization into alignment with, and one of those principles needs to be EXCELLENCE. Mediocrity should never be tolerated or accepted. To be clear, excellence is not perfection, but it is the best possible work that you can produce at any given time. At any point that you see that you could have done better given the circumstances and you did not, do not make that mistake ever again. If it was because you did not know better, then you can only perform as high as your level of awareness. Give yourself a break. Don’t beat yourself up. Learn from it and do better next time. Be a progressive, not a perfectionist and yet have no stomach for excuses. You must take advantage of every opportunity brought to you, and do consider it a failure when you do not.
“It is easier to do the job right than explain why you didn’t.” -Martin Van Buren
“Success requires no explanation. Failure permits no alibis.” Napoleon Hill
When you make EXCELLENCE a benchmark of your corporate culture, and you and your followers become addicted to the feeling of winning and being at the top of your game, be sure that critics are on their way. Get ready for them. Let them say what they may, but they can not knock your results. The more they try to tarnish your record, the more they will be seen in the pathetic light of a hater. Do not ever give them the opportunity to be right as they are looking for you to slip. EXCELLENCE and WINNING is also how your secure and maintain your leadership and your base of supporters, because everyone wants the pride of being part of the winning team and feeling as though they had something to do with that excellence and that victory. Lead your team to victory and excellence and then let them have that and then do that over and over again. If you can bring out the best in yourself, you can be a leader. When you can bring out the best in others, and help others to be winners, that’s when you have become a great leader, Captain.
When you begin playing your game like the Yankees play baseball, you automatically ascend to the seat of authority. If you had doubters before, the proof is now in the pudding. So if your VISION, your INITIATIVE, your CONFIDENCE, and your PRINCIPLES are not winning you the followers you feel that you should have, just start winning at any level that you can and set an example of EXCELLENCE in whatever field you find yourself in and it will all connect for you. Everyone will be coming to you for your secret sauce. You have a right to excellence that no one can deny you except yourself. Rev. Dr. King did not become a national hero until his leadership over the Montgomery Bus Boycott turned out to be a success. However, he would have never been able to capitalize on that success if he did not have the VISION, the INITIATIVE, the CONFIDENCE and the PRINCIPLES beforehand. He saw himself as winning long before the world would recognize it. You can do the same thing when you decide that anything less than excellence, less than your best is not worthy of you or worthy of your time. Excellence will be your standard and simply what you do, and then let the world marvel.
After your VISION, your INITIATIVE, your CONFIDENCE, your PRINCIPLES and your shining example of EXCELLENCE has placed you into the seat of authority, what makes most feel like they have gotten more than they had bargained for is when people start blaming you for everything. With great power comes great responsibility. Once attaining leadership, it must be treated with the utmost responsibility or you will quickly lose it and your leadership is the steering wheel of your business, without which your organization will spin out of control and veer headlong into disaster. No, you do not need to be held accountable for everyone’s lack of responsibility over themselves, yet become comfortable with being responsible and accountable for the influences of your leadership. The decisions you make or a lack of decisiveness will have great consequences over everything touched by the influence of your leadership. You must be willing to be held accountable for that. If failure has occurred through incompetence, that incompetence follows up the chain of command right back into your lap. The buck stops at you in the quality of your decisions in hiring those you have delegated leadership to, how effectively you have communicated with them your expectations and given adequate instructions and checked them for understanding and willing cooperation. Even the tone of the morale of your organization is set by you. You do not get to blame anyone else. If a subordinate fails to get a job done, it is not okay to leave the job undone and be put into the position of having to muster an excuse to your customers. They won’t hear it. If they say that they understand, they understand your incompetence and will quickly yet politely shift their business to the service of your competitors. Being a responsible leader, you must either replace those who let you down with someone reliable or get the job done yourself, because in the end, you are responsible for the performance of your entire organization. Own it. At first, it will be tough, but as you choose to be more responsible with your leadership, your skills will grow and you will find yourself instinctively making better judgments calls, communicating more effectively and inspiring your team. There is no other way to find this talent within yourself except through accepting responsibility. Your lieutenants will follow after your lead in responsible leadership and the principle of leadership can become a rule of your organization from the top down. Leaders can make things happen and defy limiting beliefs. When your organization is instituted with the principle of leadership, your business is on its way to flourishing. As you begin to try to get a grasp on the responsibility of the force of your leadership, it might be helpful to seek the counsel of a mentor with leadership skills and experience more advanced than yours. You are still the boss, and you must own that, but they are there to assist you only as advisors whenever you are unsure of the proper decision to make. A good mentor will not give you the answer, but help you think through the proper course of action. Develop a team of advisors, not to confuse you with too many ideas, but to help you think with the wisdom of multiple perspectives and experiences. However, have faith in yourself when it comes to rendering your final decision. Using the democratic process of rendering everything to a vote is a shirking of the responsibility of leadership. You are the captain. You want the direction to be your decision, so that you can accept blame or credit for its outcome. You be the one to pull the trigger at your discretion. Most subordinates will be content with having only advised your decision should you ever come to them for ideas or insight. On trivial matters like the color of the walls at the office, sure put it to a vote.
LOVE
There are some leaders who are feared and some who are loved and revered. Which would you say is the most powerful? Al Capone was feared. He could get people to do things through harsh brutality, threats and intimidation. You didn’t cross this man up without a concern for your life and that of your family. J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI was another feared man of power. They abused their power to get men to act and it did have an effect. But, was the allegiance they received lasting and of a quality nature? If you’ve ever worked under the supervision of a bully, you can imagine the conversations that went on between their subordinates. The environments they create are toxic, hostile and draining of creative energy. There is a disconnect, if not animosity between a leader and their subordinates. On both sides, there is an attempt to get as much as possible while giving as little as possible. The employer wants as much production of the highest quality as possible for as little wages he can be required to pay for it. The employees want as much pay and free pay as they can get for as little labor, production and effort as they will be required to give to maintain employment without concern for how this affects the health of the company which employs them. There is selfishness all around. There is blame to go all around for this, but it starts with the leader.
Now contrast this with the affection Barack Obama received at the end of his presidency. I have a sister employed to the federal government and for the past 8 years she has been proud to say that she has served under a man like Barack Obama. If you’re African American and your roots are from the South, it seems like everyone has an elder over 70 who is proud to tell people about how they marched “with” Dr. King, whether it be actually true or not. Maybe they watched him on TV and was with him in spirit. Meet anyone who has worked in video production, and if they have ever worked for Oprah Winfrey, that is their proudest detail on their resume. If you are employed, is it a badge of honor to you to work at the company you do now? Within the company, are you proud to tell people who your supervisor is? How does your employer or supervisor make you feel? Degraded or inspired and proud? Beyond “liking” do you have any great respect for the quality of the people that they are? If your time under their leadership has to end, and it will, will you miss the experience of working “with” them under their guidance? Have you ever worked under anyone’s leadership you can say these things about? Every great leader has once been the follower of another great leader. So if you are destined to be a great leader, what leader have you once followed that you would like to emulate? It could be a teacher, a coach, a family elder who positively influenced you in your youth. How did the way that they made you feel affect your performance? If they asked you to do anything within reason, would you be honored to serve them? Now imagine the entire workforce of your organization feeling this way about you. Actually sit with this thought for a moment. Leaders of this calibre create a workforce which feels much like family. And with this level of cohesion and harmony, the health at all levels of the organization are well cared for and everyone has a vested interest in its success. What can’t a team like this accomplish? When you are part of a team like this, the pay is far more than dollars and cents. But what is inspiring this high level of unity? This powerful element is called Love, and charismatic leaders are always far more powerful than leaders who move their subordinates with intimidation. Bullies push their workforce and their workforce pushes back and the friction is a like a cancer to any business. Charismatic leaders pull their workforce with an attraction unseen like a magnet and they pull them into greatness, for pushing is repulsive, pulling is attractive. If have thought of a great leader you knew personally, you have felt this magnetic attraction or pull upon you, and it is far more fulfilling to be pulled into work than pushed.
So how do you work this magnetism, this charisma within you? You have got to love and not necessarily so much in an emotional aspect, but in an attitude aspect. The people who will be coming to work for you will be giving you their time and life energy in exchange for sustenance. How many people would show up to work if no pay or monetary compensation were involved? If your business did not pay you, you would quit after some time. If they had enough money to remove the necessity of working, who would come to work? Therefore, these people work because they have to. This is how they feed and house themselves and their families. Without your business, they would need to figure out how to meet these basic necessities another way. Always be mindful of this, and if you’ve been there, then you have no excuse from not being able to relate. Treat them as you would want and expect to be treated. To do that effectively, always see yourself in them. This right here is the very definition of love, which is to see yourself in the other person. Appreciate these people for their sacrifice of time and life energy away from their families which is making you rich and know that your payment to them in comparison to its real value is only a tip though it is everything to them. Bless these people in your prayers. Never forget to show your gratitude. Not only this, give them more than just money for their time and sacrifices. Make coming to work for you an opportunity for them to reach their highest potential and feel your encouragement to do so and praise them when they actually do. Make it a place where they can learn all the details of your industry and then move where they would be best fitted. Be on the look out for their particular talents and guide them in that direction. Provide them with skills not only beneficial in the workplace that can serve them well and they can take with them wherever they go such as learning leadership skills, the scientific approach to problem solving, how to develop a positive mindset, how to balance their lifestyle and time management. You never know where life may take them, and should circumstances remove them from your business, never let it be said that they did not grow and become better and more skilled employees in whatever field your business is in during their time of employment with your company. Make their value worth more in the job marketplace wherever life may take them for having served in your company. In all these ways, invest in your employees and your employees will invest themselves in your business. Consider offering stock options, bonuses and profit sharing plans so they can enjoy a little bit of the fruits of their labor and efforts aside from just a steady paycheck. Look for opportunities to praise and recognize them whenever they do great work. Knowing that you are providing for their sustenance, don’t be patronizing, but learn to show a similar devotion any good parent would have toward the welfare of their own children. Indeed, children are being fed by your wages.
My mother was a community activist for improved public education and she was well loved and supported in our community. She was even encouraged to run for City Council. When she began to groom me for public service, she taught me this, “You can not help the people if you don’t love the people, and you will not love the people until you know the people.” As part of your education, get to know your employees as individuals while still keeping it professional. These are not peons. They are you fellow human beings. Know them by name. Remember their birthdays. Know about their children and their spouses, pets even if they have. Inquire about them whenever you get the chance. Learn about their talents and hobbies and appreciate them. Find out what is most important to them. What gets them up in the morning? What do they hope for? If you see them in a downcasted mood, invite them to talk to you about it and truly listen. Give them a celebratory salutation as soon as you see them in the morning that says you are glad to see their faces. As you do these things, see yourself in them, and you will fall in love with your workforce, I guarantee it, and they will in turn fall in love with you and enrich your life beyond monetary profits. Next, take this attitude of being in it together with your workforce into the boardroom and stop seeing your workforce as a begrudged but necessary liability, but one of your most important assets.
Therefore as important as leadership is, if you care to perfect it, focus on these points:
- Vision
- Initiative
- Confidence and Courage
- Sound Principles
- Example of Excellence
- Responsibility
- Love
This has been another preparatory lesson for those who want to get ready to tackle their business vision head on with The Baldwin Business Institute thebaldwinbusinessinstitute.eventbrite.com and want to get entrepreneurially fit to maximize their results, for these lessons will not be covered in class. Summer Class starts, Saturday, June 24th. Registration deadline is June 10th. There is a 10 student limit. Don't procrastinate.
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