As a Life Coach, I am well aware that a lot of people look to me as a leader, someone who inspires them. But you can’t be a great Coach, or a great leader, unless you yourself have people who are leading, coaching and inspiring you. I have many people who I look to for leadership and inspiration, one such person is John Maxwell. John has a daily inspiration series called “Minute with Maxwell”. On one of these videos, John recently discussed the topic of “Authority”, and the difference between “Designated Authority” and “Moral Authority”. Designated Authority is something that you are given but Moral Authority has to be earned. You can watch the video for yourself here…
This really hit home with me because when I look back over my life, I realise that I’ve been fortunate to have had some really great leaders and mentors that have inspired me, as well as a few not so great ones. And it is really obvious looking back, that the great leaders all have to have moral authority. Without it, they ultimately fail as leaders.
I can remember one company I worked for where our CEO was a great leader. She had the title, but she also had moral authority, she led people, she inspired people and the whole company was one harmonious and productive place. After she left, she was replaced by someone who inherited her title of CEO but had no moral authority. He was not a great leader, could not inspire anyone, so tried to rely on his designated authority. The whole company descended into an unproductive chaotic mess until ultimately, he was replaced.
Thinking about this today, triggered me to remember a phrase that I coined some time ago, “Arrogance Isn’t Scalable”. I made that remark just off-hand during one of my Coaching sessions with a Client, but it stuck in the back of my mind as being one of those things I should cover in one of my Blogs. Well, today’s the day.
Let’s tackle this today, by starting to explain to you what I mean by that.
The dictionary defines arrogance as: Self-important egotism. An attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions.
I would say arrogance is a state of self-centeredness. To be rude towards others, unaccepting and dismissive of others, unwilling to listen to other perspectives, unwilling to admit when you’re wrong and blind belief that whatever you think is right.
To be Scalable is the ability to grow without having to re-invent the wheel. When we think of a business which is scalable, we think of a business that already has the structure in place to enable it to grow larger without needing to totally re-structure the business.
Let me use a real simple example. Learning to juggle is scalable. If you learn to juggle 2 things correctly, you can keep adding more things to juggle. I once learned to juggle the WRONG way. Turns out it’s easier and faster to learn the wrong way to juggle then the right way. But it’s also limited in how many things you can juggle at one time when you’re doing it the wrong way. I can juggle 2 things, at a stretch I can juggle 3 things (though not very well!). But that’s the MAXIMUM I can ever juggle that way. You’ll never be able to juggle more than 3 things when you’re doing it wrong because that isn’t scalable. Get the idea…
Well it seems that some people seem to think that arrogance is sexy. There are those who are drawn to arrogance. There are some leaders who think that arrogance is sexy. Usually this is because they are using the bluff and bluster of arrogance to hide their own insecurities and inferiorities.
Some time ago I went into a Business Partnership with a guy who turned out to be the wrong choice for a Business Partner. In the beginning, he said all the right things to make me believe that he was the right choice for me to partner with, but once we began, it soon became apparent it had all been an act. He lacked integrity, was quite rude and above all, extremely arrogant. I quickly ended that partnership.
I was relating this experience to a Client once when I made the off-hand comment, arrogance isn’t scalable. The main reason I chose to end the partnership was mainly due to his lack of integrity, I won’t allow myself to associate with people who have no integrity. However, the point I was making to my Client on this occasion was about his arrogance. I was making the point, that arrogance won’t scale. You can’t grow a business with arrogance because arrogance doesn’t care about people and only by caring about people can you ultimately succeed.
Some people may be attracted to leaders that are arrogant because they mistakenly confuse arrogance for being decisive or strong willed. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. People with this kind of arrogance don’t care about other people, they don’t care about their Team, they don’t care about their customers. They have a deep-rooted notion that they are right about everything, they cannot be told anything, and they use their arrogance to put others down who may not agree with them.
They may look the part to some people but arrogance will never scale. A business which is led by an arrogant person can never scale because a successful person is the antithesis of arrogance. To have in place a structure in any business which allows you to scale, you MUST have a genuine interest in your people. You MUST value your Team, you MUST value your customers.
If you’re arrogant, you’ll lose most of your Team AND most of your customers, because most people don’t follow arrogance. The Team you have left will learn from you to become arrogant. They cannot then grow because they’ll be losing most of their Team and most their customers.
If however, you VALUE your Team, you appreciate their contribution, you lift them up instead of putting them down, they will be loyal to you and they will learn FROM you to value their Team, to left them up and appreciate them. They will VALUE and APPRECIATE your customers, and your customers will stay loyal. You have right there a recipe for SCALE. Because, as you do, so your people will do. Put the RIGHT structure in place of how you treat your Team, how you treat your customers, that will duplicate right throughout your entire organisation. That is what Scale is all about!