Erik Van Alstine

Erik Van Alstine

Author. Leadership strategist. Expert in Perceptual IntelligenceTM.

Bill Gates: This Type of Leader is “Incredibly Effective” and “Depressingly Rare”

What does it take to lead effectively? According to Bill Gates, “strength” isn’t the answer.

Bill has some experience here, given his track record in business and strategic philanthropy, and one of his most recent statements cuts against conventional wisdom. He says, “Strong leadership isn’t necessarily good leadership.”

It’s the takeaway from his recent blog titled My Favorite Books of 2016, about one of the five books on the list of faves: The Myth of the Strong Leader by Archie Brown.

Bill thought enough of the lesson in Brown’s book to write a separate blog article on it as well, describing an alternative type of leader that is “incredibly effective and depressingly rare.”

  • “Incredibly effective.” The new-type leader gets things done that can’t get done with alternative styles. The approach works phenomenally well, compared with so many approaches to leadership that don’t work and often create more problems than they solve.
  • “Depressingly rare.” There are way too few leaders who embody the new type, and the world would be a much more hopeful place if the new type were more common.

What is this new type of leader? How can we get more leaders to embody it?

Strong and Blind Equals Weak and Deadly

The primary quality is a different way of seeing strength. Instead of focusing on the personal strength of the leader, the focus is on the amount of collective strength the leader can cultivate.

Here’s the irony: leaders who are personally strong usually sabotage collective strength. They’re arrogant enough to believe they can do it all, so they hoard power. “Brown’s core argument is exactly what his title suggests,” Bill writes. “despite a worldwide fixation on strength as a positive quality, strong leaders—those who concentrate power and decision-making in their own hands—are not necessarily good leaders. On the contrary, Brown argues that the leaders who make the biggest difference in [political] office, and change millions of lives for the better, are the ones who collaborate, delegate, and negotiate—the ones who recognize that no one person can or should have all the answers.”

When leaders rely solely on their judgment, they miss out on power and perspective from collaboration. As a result, they make critical and sometimes deadly errors. “Brown does a wonderful job of showing how the same qualities that seem so appealing in strong leaders can lead, in the mildest cases, to bad decisions—and, in the most extreme cases, to death and suffering on a massive scale,” writes Gates. “These qualities can be boiled down to a belief, on the part of the leader, that he or she—and usually he—is the only one who knows what the country needs, and the only one who can deliver it.”

The lone leader is a blind leader. And the stronger a lone leader believes they are, the more stubborn they are in their blindness. “Through my work in the business world and at the foundation,” Bill writes, “I’ve seen firsthand how ineffective and even dangerous it can be when leaders make decisions alone—and how much good we can do when we work together. Good leaders will challenge themselves, bring in fresh thinking and expert advice, and not only invite but seriously consider opposing viewpoints.”

The Roots of Constructive Leadership

So, how can leaders embody these “depressingly rare” characteristics?

Knowing what they are certainly helps. It’s also helpful to know how self-defeating the lone leader philosophy can be. But that’s not enough to change things, because autocratic leaders will slip back into old patterns. When we try to change attitudes and behaviors without changing the underlying perceptions that drive them, change is hard and doesn’t work. But when we can strike at the root of the issue and change the perceptions, the attitudes and behaviors follow automatically.

The secret is to break two perceptive myths: The Myth of the Full View, and The Myth of One True View. These misperceptions automatically influence leaders to work solo. But once these myths are broken, leaders automatically seek collaboration. My recent post explains.

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