-Max Lucado
Leader of Leaders
The CEO can be many things: the figurehead of the company, recruiter, fundraiser, visionary, salesperson, head of product, operator. At their best, the core function of the CEO, what a CEO does day to day, is to be a leader of leaders.
When going from zero to one, the CEO starts out as an operator. Other leaders usually start out as operators. But later on in the company lifecycle, most leaders become principal contributors or managers. Making the CEO a manager of managers.
The CEO doesn’t manage everyone at the company. Generals in armies don’t command each individual troop. It’s not scalable. It wouldn’t make sense. Generals have lieutenant generals and major generals and brigadier generals below them. Brigadier generals have colonels and lieutenant colonels below them. Then there’s majors, captains, first lieutenants, second lieutenants. Even having a general directly manage every lieutenant colonel would be impossible. There are over ten thousand lieutenant colonels. Likewise, the CEO only really manages their direct reports. The management of the troops is not a CEO’s core competency. Their core competency is to lead leaders.
This is why CEOs aren’t good politicians. Some think they are/can be, but it’s extraordinarily rare. The CEO core competency is to manage super competent leaders in their org. It’s not necessary for CEOs to appeal to the masses. The CEO has to at minimum be palatable to their employees and be helpful/inspiring to their direct reports.
Before leaders lead leaders, they must lead. Those in charge of strategy should be those who are best at executing. One needs to understand how to do before telling others what to do. To lead, one must know their craft.
Leaders
Leading is a craft. The same way product is a craft plus a mix of soft skills. Sales is also a craft. There are different ways one can hone their craft, the same way there are different ways to build rapport. Building rapport is a horizontal craft necessary for leaders. Some archetypes include--
Strictly business- keep personal life separate from business life. I’ve seen many people do this successfully. It’s not my preferred way of doing business but at the end of the day, business is a trade/transaction that is beneficial for both parties. One need only add value to the other to do business.
One does not need to be friends with them. This coincides with the stereotype of Mormon workhorses. They do what they say they’re going to do. Keep it to the point and are honest, hard working business people.
Sorority/frat star-- women and men who bro out. Talk about the good old times when they used to party. Reminisce on crazy stories. This is a pretty common archetype in parts of business. It can work well with some and fall flat with others.
Former party boys and girls have their networks of people they rage or used to rage with. They can get deals done with those people. It can work but may not lead to deep, meaningful relationships.
Sincere connection-- works but is hard to scale. Can you be sincerely connected to each sales prospect? Being the best version of yourself helps but you can’t be besties with everyone.
Once you cross the line into besties territory, the lines of business and personal life get blurred. It’s hard to then go back and talk business.
The best deals and relationships come from a mix of these archetypes. It’s on leaders to be cognizant of the ways in which others operate and let them lean into their core competencies.
At the end of the day, people can lead in different ways but one has to be good at horizontal skills like project management to lead. If one lacks project management skills, then one cannot lead.
When thinking about it deeply, the ideal states of the world become obvious. The actual execution to get to the ideal state is the hard part. By this I mean first principles thinking is obvious but in practice extraordinarily difficult to implement day to day. It’s similar to knowing a diet vs following a diet. It takes discipline. Leaders need discipline.