Great leadership comes down to only two rules | Peter Anderton | TEDxDerby

What I want to talk to you about today is chocolate buttons. What can chocolate buttons teach us about

leadership

? Well, much more than you imagine. I have three messages that will apply to each of us today. Regardless of what you think about chocolate buttons and. Whether you see yourself as a leader or not, because you don't actually have to be a politician or a four-star general or some kind of chief executive to be a leader, in reality, each of us can set the tone. difference, each of us. We are leaders in one way or another because

leadership

is not really about a position, leadership is about who you are, but the true message of leadership has been deeply buried over the years.

The last time I Googled leadership I got 760 million results in half a year. second, it's impossible to find what we really want in all that information, I don't know, if you know, but the average person in the UK spends up to six months of their life searching for everyday things like keys and mobile phones, six months and, Of course, the more things we have, the harder it is to search for the things we are looking for. Imagine searching through 760 million things to find your case, and that is the problem we see today because thousands of different leadership models and concepts have come together to form this complex tapestry like some kind of remarkable chemical formula that we assume that any university professor can understand well.

I am here to tell you today that leadership is actually very simple, it is not easy, but it is simple and it is all you need to know about leadership. It all

comes

down to one of two simple but very powerful

rules

and if you understand these

rules

and put them into practice you cannot help but inspire others, whether they are teams, organizations or communities. So why this explosion of leadership theories causing so much confusion? Well, I think the problem is that many of us have stopped looking for the keys to leadership and have started looking for the magic bullet, instead we are constantly looking for something new, something wonderful that, once you understand this, everything will change and fall into place if I can just take my shiny new silver bullet, load it into my cannon and fire, everything will be fine and yet instead of producing simplicity it should produce more and more complexity, more and more models have buried the true leadership message deeper and deeper.

These two rules are lost somewhere underneath everything I'm going to tell you as a secret people have been practicing leadership for a long time and the essence of leadership goes back centuries, millennia, even now I'm not really a boss of Say I'm not a professor, I'm not Einstein, I'm an engineer passionate about leadership simplicity and alignment and I've seen leadership from all kinds of angles. I've seen

great

successes and I've seen some monumental failures. and since I have learned more from my failures than from my successes, today I am going to share with you my biggest failure, because I used to be the man who made chocolate pieces, I was the problem son of a factory not far from here. and they brought me in as the young big shot who would be able to save the day regardless of what the line had done to my two predecessors, the little we knew now before joining my worst shift, we're going on a journey and The Journey What we are going to undertake is the journey of leadership and it is a journey through time and space.

We will go back to the 6th century BC. C. and we will join soon, but on our way there, just recognize it in less than 15 minutes, we are going to go through centuries of leadership thinking, so the

only

thing we can be sure of is that we are going to leave a lot of things out, as if Tsu believed the leader was better when people barely knew him. there was that when his work was done his goal was accomplished people would say we did it ourselves not far away sun tzu was writing the art of war a book that is on the recommended reading list for many top executives today and he He believed that the general who advances without coveting and who retreats without fear of misfortune whose

only

thought is to protect his country and do good service to his sovereign is the jewel of the kingdom.

The Roman consul Cicero in the 1st century BC. he absolutely understood that the leader could only give results through other people he had to focus his attention on others if something was going to happen if something was going to change jesus in the first century taught if anyone would be

great

among you let him be your servant his disciples compare the relationship between leaders and followers to the relationship between a shepherd caring for his flock, they all agreed that leadership was not really about dominance, leadership was about service until we hit the 16th century and our astute Italian Niccolo Machiavelli wrote his famous book The Prince, he believed he was everything. about the leader, the leader had to maintain power at all costs, the focus was exclusively on them, they would maintain power by force or by deception if necessary and in fact it must seem like one thing, when in reality it is a completely different one and us.

We're still sorting out his mess today because while he taught us great insights about the dangers of managing change, what we also learned from Machiavelli was how to lock up the number one rule of leadership and throw away the key, then we get to the 19th century. Scott Thomas Carlisle believed that leaders were born, not made, you either had it or you didn't, and if you had it, you would make great things happen if you didn't do it well, you were a leader or a follower, you were a manager. or a worker later in the 20th century frederick taylor

comes

with scientific management says forget that people become better simply optimize the way their work is done the correct way to do a job was defined and the workers no longer had any responsibility Because of how they did their job, everything was decided for them and, although scientific management stagnated in the 1940s, the impact of their thinking still lingers like a bad smell today, with this huge gap between managers and workers, All of this unraveled ancient wisdom about leadership. taking the principles the fundamental principles of the number one rule of leadership turned upside down and placed on their head so that in that desperate attempt they find themselves searching for the traits of leaders the characteristics what if we studied the best leaders and measured them? and see what we can develop ourselves and then this study was put aside when they recognized that really the only statistically significant thing they could come up with was that the best leaders were slightly taller and slightly above average intelligence and that was so good When the time came, they finally moved on to what leaders said.

Well, let's look at this behavioral model. Surely we can copy the best leaders and then become great and this led to the birth of the famous chief executive. This is where he books it. autobiographies were written and read like leadership manuals, the whole thinking was that 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 do it. To be brilliant is to undergo a frontal lobotomy and that was essentially the thinking that followed, which led to what professor richard jolly of london business school called the heathrow airport leadership school, this is where your boss You go on vacation and you get to the airport and you realize They forgot their book, so they headed to the airport bookstore and they ended up in the business section holding the latest autobiography of a celebrity CEO and they went and devoured it and They came back trying to be like them and, of course, they never succeeded.

It works so that really enlightened employees learn to save themselves a lot of grief by buying their boss a novel before going on vacation and all this just buries the principles of leadership deeper and deeper and so we get to the point where the rule Number one is buried and of all things and yet rule number one is incredibly simple. Well, number one is the starting point. Everything you need to know about leadership begins with this principle. The number one rule of leadership is that it's not about you. or to misquote bill clinton it's about stupid people it all starts here eleanor roosevelt put it this way she said a good leader can inspire people to have confidence in the leader a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves themselves why because they get rule number one and a leader, of course, is only a leader when he has followers, so the temptation is to create more followers who need you to get the answers that you can then provide, but, of course, the Better leaders don't create more followers, they create more.

Leaders recognize that the idea of ​​the hero flying in to save the day solving every problem responding to everything just doesn't make sense the world is too complex for any of us to have all the answers and there I was with our problem child he was everywhere. solving this problem solving that problem coming up with fabulous ideas working all hours convinced that I could solve everything and terrified of failing terrified of being some kind 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 thing the situation was falling apart around my ears because at that moment I thought it was all about me in my head, it was my blood, my sweat, my tears and my ego.

You see, every time we find ourselves in a situation where we think that everything depends on us, when we think that we are the only ones who care, we are the only ones who have it, whether it is in our house, whether it is in school, whether at work. whether in our community, the secret is to go back to rule number one. Robert Greenleaf in the 70s recovered the key to leadership with his servant leadership model. He brought back rule number one loud and clear, but it was only part of the picture. There was still another key missing and that key was rule number two, so just before we get to rule number two let's check authentic leadership.

It is not the only theory of leadership during the rounds at this time, but it is the one that brings us. rule number two because authentic leadership is not about a great man, it is not about a fixed set of characteristics, it is about being at the high end of who we really are, it is less about trying to be someone else and More than trying to be someone else. ourselves brilliantly because any of us can be a leader, it starts with having a clear understanding of who we are, what we stand for, what our strengths and weaknesses are and then behaving in a transparent way that unites all of these things john maxwell talks about five levels of leadership, he says that people follow first of all because they have to that is level one of leadership, if you are the boss, they have to do it like adults, that's where in the cookie factory you have a line of people waiting at Five minutes before the end of the shift, all changed and ready to go, only to swipe their card in the clock machine as they walk 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 you are followed for what you have achieved. Level four is where they follow you for what you have done for them and level five is where they follow you for who you are and what you are. you represent, you see each layer deepen and form a deeper level of commitment and as you move from each layer to the next, it's all about choice, but not your choice, your choice, that's leadership rule number one, so the change is apparently very misquoted.

What you want to see in the world brings us face to face with rule number two, which is as simple and powerful as rule number one, it's all about you, if you ever want to create change around you, it starts with who you are. and how you behave a wide range of theories, from evolios to zeleznics, take us to the point that ultimately if we want to inspire others, it's about who we are, so the keys take us back to our factory of chocolate because I thought everyone else needed to change. I didn't think the problem was me, I was the only one who understood 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 happening around me and my team and the piles of chocolate we were munching on were just a reflection of me because leadership and life are a bit like that, things can go a little wrong from time to time and it's easy to find ourselves blaming other people. and pointing the finger somewhere else, but the true leader looks in the mirror and says if I want something to be different, it starts with me because the true leader recognizes that what happens around them is a reflection of who they are, that It is the power to govern.

Number two, we recognize that there is no point in waiting for everyone else to get on with it, we have to start cleaning up our own act, but if we want others to live up to our expectations, then it all starts with who we are. andWe represent and we are. Are we standing up for what we believe in or are we just doing time Nelson Mandela absolutely got rule number two right and said I couldn't change others until I changed myself and don't think for a minute that this is something new. Ancient wisdom had so much time. ago lao tzu said to dominate others is strength to dominate oneself 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 until you do it and for them their principles have been around for a long time because rule number two of leadership recognizes that the people around us do not come with remote controls they recognize that if we want to make a change in those around us, it starts with our behaviors, it starts with who We are because the environment we create around us is simply a reflection of our thinking and our behavior, so it is time for us to ask ourselves what environment we are creating, is it like this or is it like this because we are all leaders, we all lead in some way or another.

Another, we are all creating an environment around us, so when it comes to leadership in reality, all we are doing in today's world is repackaging and redistributing what has been known for millennia, and yet many of us We're sitting on the floor surrounded by wrapping paper playing with the boxes instead of focusing on the messages right in the center. I would love to say that the only mistakes I have made in leadership have to do with chocolates, but life is not like that, life is a journey and sometimes we go around in circles and there is no perfect leader, only the best option.

He is a leader who really understands rule number one and rule number two. We live in a truly complex world that cries out for simplicity, so let's take the lead on these two simple rules because there isn't a single element of leadership that doesn't. It depends on one of these two principles, it's not about you and it's just about you, so those are my first two messages. I'm going to close with the third and introduce you to my little friend, the key elf. I don't know if anyone else has key elves in their house, but every time I'm about to leave, the key elf notices that I'm trying to get out the door, takes my keys and puts them in a safe place, right?

You know? He sometimes he's hidden under a bunch of things, sometimes he's in plain sight and the really devious ones hide my cell phone, but only when he's on silent, so there I am. I imagine the scene wandering around frantically trying to find my mobile phone until I recognize it. actually, although it's on silent, it's set to vibrate, so I call the number and walk around listening intently trying to identify and find what I think is missing and there it is stuck in my shoe for some unknown reason, all I had to to do was listen and That's really my final message.

Today we may find ourselves going around in circles looking for the silver bullet, something new that will magically make everything fall into place, and my suggestion is that perhaps everything we need to know about leadership and life was written a long time ago. a while ago maybe it's just time we started listening listening to what has already been said thank you