On Leadership

Earlier this year I received an email from Chris Yates (blog | @YatesSQL). If you don’t yet know Chris or follow him on Twitter, you should. He’s a wonderful example of what I believe represents the very best of a PASS member.

Chris had a very simple question:

“I was hoping you would be able to point me to a few good Leadership books or recommend some material to me. I always am wanting to expand my techniques with my own group and beyond and thought you may have a plethora of material you’ve encountered over the years that may be beneficial.”

I had an answer immediately, but I decided to give myself some time to think about it a bit more. I didn’t want to respond without making certain I had done a bit of research on current books, blogs, webcasts, and podcasts. Turns out there are a lot of people out there willing to sell you the secret to leadership, and most of. After some time I replied, giving him roughly the same answer I was ready to give right away. Here is my answer.

Chris,

Apologies for the lateness of my reply.

I don’t have any particular book to recommend. It’s because I don’t think any such book exists. Most of them are self-promotional bullshit marketing material meant to raise a few extra dollars for the individual and not meant to actually help people. The reason I believe this is because I have yet to come across a book that reveals the true secret to leadership.

It’s a secret I learned when I was young. I was 18 when I took over as the varsity summer league basketball coach at my old high school, coaching kids that were all of a year younger than me. I was 19 and a sophomore in college when I took a job as the Resident Assistant, in charge of 63 freshmen (some of which were older than I was). In a short span of a handful of years at a very young age I was put into positions of leadership with zero (0) training.

None. Nothing. Trial by fire. Just like any good DBA.

I was lucky to be surrounded by some very caring individuals. I had a great coaching mentor for basketball. I had a great faculty/staff folks in college to help with my role as an RA. Between those two parts of my life I stumbled across the secret to leadership, only I didn’t truly understand or value what I had learned until later in life after many, many mistakes along the way. And I am still making them, too.

One night while on RA duty I was having a conversation with Deacon Bob, who was the staff monitor for our residence hall (I like the word ‘dorm’ better, but whatever). We were having a conversation like most any other night. Deacons, Rabbis, Reverends, and the Augustinian priests (yeah, I went to a Catholic college, by mistake, great story though) make for wonderful, deep, insightful conversations. You don’t even need to be stoned. Anyway, I can still remember the moment when Deacon Bob told me this secret. The look on his face, the glimmer in his eyes, the way he moved his hands. It was as if he was delivering a sermon, just to me, in that one moment. He looked at me and said:

“Most people think they know leadership, but they don’t. They have no idea. They think leading is about giving orders. They think leading is about following directions. Leading is not about that. No, the true meaning of leadership is this: To lead is to serve. You need to serve the people you lead, not the other way around. History shows us that the other way around never ends well for the leaders. Serve the people you lead, and you’ll find you can go to the most amazing places, together.”

As a 19-year-old kid, I didn’t really grasp what was being said to me, but I knew it was significant. Over the years the words “to lead is to serve” has stuck with me and I see examples of that, good and bad, everywhere.

I said both roles helped me find the secret, but to be honest if you follow those five words you will be better than 95% of the other “leaders” out there. Just think of our tiny (relative to the world of Data) SQL Community and examples of where someone claims to be a leader, but in reality they are only there for others to serve them, not the other way around. Even the times when they pretend to serve others it is always in return for something. Very few people truly give and expect nothing in return, and that’s all humans not just our tiny subset here in SQL land.

Here’s the second part, the one I learned from coaching.

As a coach we are always looking for something to “borrow” from other teams. A play (or a player), a coaching technique, anything that can give you an edge. But there’s a trap some coaches fall into. At some point they like a certain coach so much that they try to emulate them in every way (for me it was Dean Smith). But you can’t. You can’t keep trying to be like someone else, because you will NEVER be them, which means you will never be as good as they are, which means you are always destined to be second best. I hate second best. I don’t care what they say, a Silver Medal sucks. I know people with Silver Medals and each one tells you that it reminds them of how close they came to being a winner.

So how do you get to be the best? Simple: you be yourself. As a coach what that means is you don’t try to be exactly like someone else. Instead, you take one thing from one coach, another from a different coach, and so on and you put them together and eventually you develop your own style. For me, I took plays from Coach Cal (then at UMass), defense tips from Tark and Cheney, and psychological/physical fitness tips from Jimmy Johnson (and I *HATE* the Hurricanes/Cowboys!), using all of them together to make something different. To make me, the coach, the leader.

I was 23 when I was hired as the JV coach at my old high school. Fresh out of college and without a real job, it was just something I could do while I worked on my GRE exams to get into grad school. We won our first 33 games before losing on a tip-in at the buzzer that the refs had to discuss at half court if the basket counted. I finished 35-2 and left for grad school, and held odd assistant coaching jobs for the next 10 years, but never a head coach again.

To lead is to serve. Don’t try to be like everyone else. There’s no one book on leadership. You need to read ALL THE BOOKS and decide which points resonate with you. Then take that point and find a way to help it serve the people you are chosen to lead.

That’s the secret.

Well, it’s worked for me. It might work for you.

I really have no idea.

HTH,

Tom