Leaders (like Hobbits) Never Travel Alone
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
Americans love the idea of a grizzled stoic leader.
The one person in the front who makes decisions and calls the plays.
My first experience of leadership was like this. I used to work at an industrial supply company. The branch manager would spend most of his time in the office with his door closed. He appeared to be making important phone calls, but no one knew exactly who he was on the other end. He would come out of his office, walk into the warehouse (Where I worked with the other lowly shipping and receiving clerks), and, without explanation, change the way he wanted pipe fittings organized or the storage structure of safety equipment. After dropping the bomb dropped and assigning hours of labor, he’d disappear into the office and we wouldn’t see him for days.
That company eventually went out of business. I am sure leadership failure played some roll in its demise.
Leadership builds fellowships.
Community building may be the leader’s most important task.
A shared Vision
Leaders often assume everyone sees what they see. They don’t. Too often, vision is not shared. Leadership works hard to complete a visionary goal. The rest of the room looks at four-walls and a task list, hoping for a paycheck at the end of the month. Saving the Shire or returning goodness to the throne of Middle Earth is not something they can see.
And that's not their fault. The lack of a shared vision is on the leadership.
Vision is ineffective when it's not shared. It’s not enough for you to “see it.” Everyone you are seeking to influence must “see it” too.
Even with a clear vision, everyone has a different role to play.
Fountains, Builders, Pourers
Some people are fountains. They are bubbling springs of ideas, plans, and goals. We need fountains. Fountains solve problems. Fountains create new products. Fountains provide resources. Fountains can also be extremely messy. If everyone’s a fountain there’s water everywhere, and nothing gets done.
Fountains need people who build buckets.
Builders are not idea people. They are planners, strategizers, and system-builders. They take the chaos of fountains and build systems to contain ideas, solutions, and creativity. Builders create methods for dealing with the superfluous material that often comes from a fountain. Every fountain needs at least one bucket-builder and often more than one.
Now we arrive at another problem. If fountains and builders are not action-oriented, your business becomes a well-organized water-warehouse. Every fountain and builder needs a pourer
Every organization needs action-oriented people.
Nothing happens without action. Once we organize and plan the raw material, someone must pour the buckets in the right place at the right time. Pourers may not have a lot of new ideas and they don't need organizational chops (although a pourer can have both). Pourers have the propensity to act. Planning is not enough. We need doers.
Gandalf is a fountain. Aragorn is a builder. Frodo is a doer.
Each is a leader.
We need all of them.
