Great Leadership Comes Down To Only Two Rules: Peter Anderton (Transcript) 

It’s not easy, but it is simple. And everything you ever need to know about leadership comes down to one of two simple, but very powerful rules. And if you grasp these rules and put them into practice, you cannot fail to inspire others, be they teams, organisations, or communities.

So why this explosion in leadership theories that causes so much confusion? Well, I think the problem is this. Too many of us have stopped searching for the keys of leadership, and we’ve started looking for the silver bullet instead, constantly on the lookout for something new, this wonderful thing that once I understand this, everything will change and fall into place. If I can just take my shiny new silver bullet and load it into my barrel and fire, all will be well.

And yet rather than producing simplicity, it’s just produced more and more complexity. More and more models have buried the true message of leadership deeper and deeper and deeper. And these two rules are lost somewhere underneath all the stuff. I’m going to let you into a secret.

People have been practising leadership for a very long time, and the essence of leadership goes back for centuries, millennia even. Now I’m not actually a head of state. I’m not a professor. I’m not Einstein.

An Engineer’s Perspective on Leadership

I’m an engineer with a passion for leadership, simplicity, and alignment. And I’ve seen leadership from all sorts of angles. I’ve seen great successes, and I’ve seen some monumental failures. And because I’ve learned more from my failures than from my successes, I’m going to share with you my ultimate failure today.

Because I used to be the man who made chocolate Hobnobs. It was the problem child of a factory not so far from here. And I was brought in as the young hotshot who would be able to save the day, irrespective of what the line had done to my two predecessors. How little we knew.

Now before we join my worst ever shift, we’re going to go on a journey. And the journey we’re going to go on is the journey of leadership. And it’s a journey through time and space. We’re going to head back to the sixth century BC, and we’re going to join that too. But on our way there, let’s just recognise that in under 15 minutes, we’re going to go through centuries of leadership thinking.

So the one thing we can be sure of is we’re going to leave a lot out. So Lao Tzu believed that the leader was best when people barely knew he existed. That when his job was done, his aim fulfilled, the people would say we did it ourselves.

Historical Perspectives on Leadership

Not so far away, Sun Tzu was writing The Art of War, a book that’s on the recommended reading list for a lot of top executives today. And he believed that the general who advances without coveting fame, and who retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

The Roman consul, Cicero in the first century BC, absolutely understood that the leader could only deliver results through other people. He had to focus his attention on others if anything was going to happen, if anything was going to change.

Jesus in the first century taught, “If anyone would be great amongst you, let him be your servant.” His disciples likened the relationship between leaders and followers to the relationship between a shepherd caring for their flock. All of these agreed that leadership wasn’t actually about dominion, leadership was about service.

Until we come to the 16th century, and our cunning Italian Niccolò Machiavelli wrote his famous book, The Prince, he believed it was all about the leader. The leader had to maintain power at all costs. The focus was entirely upon them. They would maintain power by force or by deceit, if necessary. And in fact, they would need to appear to be one thing, whilst in reality being something else altogether.

The Evolution of Leadership Theory

And we’re still clearing up his mess today. Because whilst he taught us some great insights in the perils of managing change, what we also learned from Machiavelli was how to lock up rule number one of leadership and throw away the key.

Then we come to the 19th century. The Scot Thomas Carlyle believed that leaders were born, not made. You either had it or you didn’t. And if you had it, then you would make great things happen. If you didn’t, well, tough. You were either a leader or a follower. You were either a manager or a worker.

Then into the 20th century, Frederick Taylor comes along with scientific management. He says forget people becoming their best. Just optimise the way their work is done. The right way to do a job was defined and workers no longer had any responsibility for how they did their work. It was all decided for them. And whilst scientific management was parked by the 1940s, the impact of his thinking still lingers on like a bad smell today, with this massive gap between managers and workers. All of this stuff unravelled the ancient wisdom on leadership.

All of it taking the principles, the fundamental principles of rule number one of leadership, turned it inside out and placed it on its head. So in that desperate attempt, they find themselves looking for the traits of leaders, the characteristics. “What if we were to study the best leaders and measure them and see what we can develop ourselves?” And then this study was put to one side when they recognised that actually the only statistically significant thing that they could come up with was that the best leaders were slightly taller and slightly above average intelligence, and that was as good as it got.

The Celebrity Chief Executive

So then finally they moved to what leaders did. They said, “Well, let’s look at this behavioural model. Surely we can copy the best leaders and then become great ourselves.” And this led to the birth of the celebrity chief exec. This is where their books, their autobiographies were written and read like leadership manuals. The whole thinking was if you need to be brilliant, you need to be like me. You need to walk like me. You need to talk like me. You need to dress like me.

In fact, the only way you can actually be brilliant is to have a frontal lobotomy. And that was essentially the thinking that went forward. It led to what Professor Richard Jolly from the London Business School called the Heathrow Airport School of Leadership. This is where your boss goes on holiday and gets to the airport, realising they’ve forgotten their book. So they head to the airport bookshop and they end up in the business section, clutching the latest celebrity chief exec autobiography. And they go away and they devour it and they come back trying to be like them. And of course, it never works.

Leadership Beyond the Surface

So, the really enlightened employees learnt to save a lot of pain by buying their boss a novel before they went away on holiday. And all of this stuff just buries the principles of leadership deeper and deeper and deeper. And so, we get to the point that rule number one is buried in amongst all of the stuff. And yet, rule number one is incredibly simple.

Rule number one is the starting point. Everything that you need to know about leadership starts from this one principle. Rule number one of leadership is that it’s not about you. Or to misquote Bill Clinton, “it’s about the people, stupid.” Everything starts here. Eleanor Roosevelt put it like this: She said, “A good leader can inspire people to have confidence in the leader. A great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves.” Why? Because they get rule number one.

And a leader, of course, is only a leader when they’ve got followers. So, the temptation is to create more followers who need you for the answers that you can actually then provide. But of course, the best leaders don’t create more followers. They create more leaders.

Understanding Rule Number One

They recognise that the idea of the hero flying in to save the day, solving all of the problems, answering everything, just doesn’t make sense. The world is too complex for any one of us to have all of the answers. And there I was with our problem child. I was everywhere, solving this problem, solving that problem, coming up with fabulous ideas, working all hours, convinced that I could sort it all out, and terrified that I would let the side down, terrified that I’d be some sort of failure.

But I got it all wrong, because at the end of the day I didn’t understand rule number one. So, the whole situation was unravelling around my ears, because right then I thought it was all about me. Because in my head it was my blood, my sweat, my tears, and my ego. You see, whenever we find ourselves in a situation where we think everything is dependent upon us, when we think we’re the only one who cares, we’re the only one who gets it, whether it’s in our home, whether it’s in school, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in our community, the secret is to get back to rule number one.

Robert Greenleaf in the 70s brought back the key to leadership with his model of servant leadership. He brought back rule number one loud and clear, but it was only part of the picture. The other key was still missing, and that key was rule number two. So, just before we come to rule number two, we’re going to check in with authentic leadership.

Rule Number Two: The Core of Change

It’s not the only leadership theory doing the rounds at the moment, but it’s the one that brings us to rule number two. Because authentic leadership isn’t about a great man. It’s not about a thick set of characteristics. It’s about turning up at the top end of who we really are.

It’s less about trying to be somebody else, and it’s more about trying to be ourselves brilliantly. Because any one of us can be a leader. It starts with having a clear understanding of who we are, of what we stand for, of what our strengths and weaknesses are, and then behaving in a transparent way that draws all of these things together. John Maxwell talks about five levels of leadership.

The Five Levels of Leadership

He says people follow, first of all, because they have to. That’s level one leadership. Because you’re the boss, they have to do as they’re told. That’s where, in the biscuit factory, you’ve got a queue of people waiting at five minutes before the end of the shift, all changed and ready to go, just to slide their card through the clock machine as they head out the door. They give you their minimum, never their best.

Level two is where they follow you because of how they feel about you as an individual. Level three is where they follow you because of what you’ve achieved. Level four is where they follow you because of what you have done for them, and level five is where they follow you because of who you are and what you represent.

You see, each layer, going deeper and deeper, forms a deeper level of commitment, and as you move from each layer to the next, it’s all about choice, but not your choice, their choice. That’s leadership rule number one. So, the change, apparently much misquoted, “be the change that you want to see in the world,” brings us face to face with rule number two, which is as simple and as powerful as rule number one.

Embracing Authentic Leadership

It’s only about you. If ever you want to create change around you, it starts with who you are and how you behave. An old range of theories from Evolios to Zeleznik takes us through to the point that ultimately, if we want to inspire others, it’s about who we are. So, it brings us back to our chocolate Hobnob factory.

Because I thought everybody else needed to change. I didn’t think the problem was me. I was the only one who got it. I was the only one who understood the problem. I was the only one who cared. They were the ones who needed to change. But in reality, what was going on around me and my team and the piles of chocolate Hobnobs that we were crunching through, they were just a reflection of me. Because leadership and life is a bit like that.

Things can go a bit pear-shaped from time to time, and it’s easy to find ourselves blaming other people and pointing the finger elsewhere. But the true leader looks themselves in the mirror and says, “If I want anything to be different, it starts with me.” Because the true leader recognises that what’s going on around them is a reflection of who they are. That’s the power of rule number two. We recognise there’s no point waiting for everybody else to get their act together.

The Essence of True Leadership

We need to start cleaning up our own act. But if we want others to live up to our expectations, then it starts with who we are and what we stand for. And are we standing up for what we believe, or are we just doing time? Nelson Mandela absolutely nailed rule number two when he said, “I couldn’t change others until I changed myself.”

And don’t think for a minute this is anything new. Ancient wisdom had this long ago. Lao Tzu said, “Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” Cicero said, “The enemy is within the gates. It is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we must contend.”

Jesus said, “As you want others to do unto you, do so unto them.” These principles have been around for a very, very long time, because the rule number two of leadership recognises that people around us don’t come with remote controls. They recognise that if we want to bring about change in those around us, it starts with our behaviours. It starts with who we are. Because the environment that we create around us is simply a reflection of our thinking and of our behaviour. So, it’s time for us to ask the question, what environment are we creating?

The Leadership Journey: Reflection and Action

Is it like this, or is it like this? Because all of us are leaders. We all lead in one way or another. We’re all creating an environment around us. So, when it comes to leadership, in reality, all that we’re doing in today’s world is repackaging and redistributing what has been known for millennia. And yet, too many of us are sitting on the floors, surrounded by wrapping paper, playing with the boxes, rather than focusing on the messages that are right at the core.

I’d love to say that the only mistakes I ever made in leadership involved chocolate Hobnobs, but life’s not quite like that. Life is a journey, and sometimes we go around in circles. And there’s no such thing as the perfect leader. But the next best thing is a leader who really gets rule number one and rule number two. We live in a really complex world that is crying out for simplicity.

So, let’s just take the lead on these two simple rules, because there isn’t a single element of leadership that doesn’t hinge on one of these two principles. It’s not about you and it’s only about you. So, those are my first two messages.

I’m going to close with the third and I’m going to introduce you to my little friend here, the key goblin. I don’t know if anyone else has key goblins in their house, but whenever I’m about to head out, the key goblin notices that I’m trying to get out the door and it takes my keys and it tucks them away somewhere safe.

Listening: The Final Leadership Message

Sometimes it’s hidden under a pile of stuff. Sometimes it’s in plain view and the really devious ones will hide my mobile phone, but only when it’s on silence. So, there I am, just picture the scene, wandering around frantically trying to find my mobile phone until I recognise that actually, although it’s on silent, it’s set to vibrate. So, I call the number and I walk around listening carefully, trying to identify and find what I think is lost and there it is, tucked in my shoe for some unknown reason.

All I had to do was listen and that’s really my final message today. We can find ourselves spinning around in circles, searching for the silver bullet, something new that will magically let everything fall into place and my suggestion is that maybe everything that we need to know about leadership and life was written down a long time ago. Maybe it’s simply time for us to start listening, listening to what’s already been said. Thank you.

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