Associations, Volunteerism and More

It seems nearly everyone has heard of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder and CEO. Mark and his team have transformed an idea designed to connect people into a huge business that was taken public last week in the largest IPO in US history.

Mark and many of his team members are millionaires and billionaires today as a result. So does that make Mark a great leader?

I contend it does not. Short term success, no matter how big, does not equal great leadership. Great leadership of a company is measured, at least partially by the company’s success over a long period of time.  (Remember the Collins book, Built to Last?)

By all accounts, Mr. Zuckerberg is doing what he thinks is necessary to become a great leader for Facebook. It seems he is genuinely interested in seeing Facebook succeed long-term. I recently read the this article from Fast Company magazine about Mr. Zuckerberg’s approach to leadership development.

The article describes how Mr. Zuckerberg has grown as a leader over the last several years.  I was impressed with what appears to be a willingness to study other leaders, learn from them, and develop his own style based on what he has learned.

Growing Facebook from an idea to a major company with more than three thousand employees and the biggest IPO in US history took amazing leadership.  Recognizing the importance of Facebook team members and their contributions to the company while maintaining a focus on Facebook’s vision of connecting people takes a strong leader.

Mr. Zuckerberg is off to a good start.

I am excited to see what happens with Facebook over the long haul.  More importantly, I am interested to see the kind of leadership Mr. Zuckerberg provides to Facebook.

Mr. Zuckerberg may very well be a great leader. But time will be the judge of that.

I work everyday to be a leader in my business. I develop a vision; get buy in for that vision from my team; give direction and measurable outcomes or expectations to my team members; I gather data from team members regarding how they’re doing in accomplishing their assigned outcomes and try to help them make adjustments as necessary.

Seems kind of simple. My team works well together and seem to buy in to the overall plan.

It’s not that easy when leading my team at home.

I have a vision for my family but it’s not been clearly articulated to my family members and as a result they certainly haven’t bought into it.

My family members don’t work for me. (In fact most of the time they think I work for them) As a result they may not have the same incentives to buy in that my teammates at work have.

We establish expectations and measurable outcomes with my family but they don’t have the same incentives to accomplish those outcomes as my teammates at work.

So how does one lead a family successfully? What are the leadership qualities I have developed at work that can transfer to my family?

I have given this much thought. I need to give it much more. However, I have come to a few conclusions – let me know what you think of them:

1. Develop a vision for your family and share it with all family members. Just like you do in your company, develop a mission statement and have it posted in your home somewhere all can see it and be reminded of it.
2. Develop core values for your family. Develop them together. Share them with each other. Post them in your house where all can see and be reminded of them. Hold each other accountable to these values.
3. Lead with love. Love is powerful. But love means more than just care deeply for someone or something. To truly love, you must sacrifice and serve. We do this in our businesses and it becomes obvious to our teammates. It helps them buy in to our vision when they see us sacrifice things for the greater good of the company or serve our customers or even our employees.  For example, we might host a lunch for our employees and serve it to them; we might reduce our income rather than lay off an employee during challenging economic times.

We have to sacrifice and serve at home in order to be effective leaders as well.  This will demonstrate the love we have for them.

Through the shared vision and values and the demonstration of love, we will be great leaders at home – as we already are at work.

What do you think? What do you do at home to demonstrate your leadership?

There has been a lot of buzz this past week about an opinion letter written to and published in the New York Times last week. The letter was written by an executive at Goldman Sachs who was resigning from his position and from the company.

I know it’s easy to dismiss as a complaint from a disgruntled worker – and maybe it was just that. However, isn’t that fact in and of itself enough to say there is a leadership hole at Goldman Sachs?

Below is a link to the letter, read it for yourself and draw your own conclusions. My conclusions are these:

1. As much as good leadership can help propel organizations forward toward their mission, bad leadership can ruin organizations.
2. Bad leadership can mean many things but the roots of bad leadership are not complicated. The roots of bad leadership are:  Lack of values or focus on the wrong values; Inability to establish and communicate the mission or the organization.

In the case of Goldman Sachs (if you believe the article), the leadership was bad because of both these issues. They did not have the right values and they were not focused on the right mission. In fact, it appears they may have been focused on the wrong mission – their own personal ones – not that of the organization.

Good leaders never put their own personal agendas before the mission of the organization they lead.

Here’s a link to the article.  Let me know what you think…