Leading With NLP: Essential Leadership Skills for Influencing and Managing People. Joseph O’Connor

know about the latest fashion or music, I ask my teenage daughter. Mechanics, doctors, engineers, lawyers and teachers can all be leaders by what they know. And knowledge alone is insufficient.

      Think of your best teachers or coaches, those who really made a difference for you and what you could do. Who comes to mind? A teacher from school? A college teacher, or a sports coach, or business coach? What sort of qualities did they have?

      I remember when I was at college, there was a lecturer who would enter the musty lecture hall with its wooden benches polished by the trousers of a generation of students and deliver his lecturer for an hour in a monotone, looking down at his notes all the time. Then he would pack away his notes and leave. He barely looked at the class. We wondered if he would notice if no one was there for this weekly ritual. A group of us used to draw lots to decide who would attend in any one week and secretly record the lecture so we could all listen to it later. The only thing I remember about this man’s lectures was that he pronounced ‘food’ as ‘fud’, which tells you how captivated I was. This man knew a lot about his subject, without ever inspiring me to find out anything about it above the bare minimum. Other lecturers were superb, stimulating and not only did I remember what they told me, but I also left the lecture hall wanting to find out more in my own time because the subject came alive when they spoke of it.

      So knowledge will win over authority – would you rather be in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing or someone who has the formal authority in the situation? – but true leaders have something more. They give of themselves.

      Example

      Example is the third pillar of leadership, and the strongest. People look to a leader for ideas and guidance, and the strongest message comes not from what you say, but who you are.

      A leader who acts as a role model takes responsibility for what they do. Responsibility is a double-edged word – the ability to respond is one edge, the recognition of your influence the other. Influence and responsibility go together. Your self, values, beliefs, expectations and actions enter everything you do and affect everything you do, and if you pay attention to your experience, then what you do affects you and changes you and the people with you. A responsible and effective leader does not think of themselves in isolation. They are part of the team they lead. This means that they lead and influence both themselves and others.

      In order for leaders to act as role models and lead by example they have to be true to themselves. In doing this, they give us the message not to be like them, but to be ourselves, a message we all recognize. And in being true to ourselves we are developing our own leadership qualities, moving further along the path of leadership.

      Being a leader is not always easy, though, and there are no facile answers. Most choices are vague, fuzzy and cannot be logically argued one way or another. I have a favourite Sufi story about the holy man Nassr-U-Din presiding as a judge in a civil court where two people were disputing a grievance. The first man argued his case very eloquently.

      ‘That was very convincing!’ said Nassr. ‘You are obviously right!’

      ‘A moment, sir,’ whispered the clerk of the court. ‘You must wait for the other man to argue his case before deciding.’

      The second defendant took the stand and presented his case no less eloquently.

      ‘Of course!’ said Nassr. ‘I must have been blind. Now I see that you are right!’

      The clerk pulled at his sleeve. ‘But my lord,’ he hissed, ‘they can’t both be right!’

      ‘No,’ said Nassr. ‘You’re right.’

      Sometimes both ways seem right and yet we have to choose one or the other – a difficult decision. In such cases we have to follow what we trust. The word ‘trust’ comes from the same root as the word ‘truth’. Truth for each of us is what we trust. If we do not trust ourselves, then ‘truth’ becomes what others tell us. Ultimately, leadership means trusting yourself and developing others to trust themselves. People do not trust those who do not trust themselves.

Leadership Style

      Different leaders will have different mixtures of knowledge, authority and example. A teacher can be a leader by virtue of what they know and the position they hold. A leader may be someone with formal authority – a manager, an army officer, police officer, or elected official. A leader may have religious knowledge and authority. You cannot set yourself up as a role model, that position, like leadership, is one others have to give you, and it may be unwelcome. We have all taken parents and significant adults as role models when we were children. When we have children we automatically become a role model for them, whether we want it or not.

      A coach can be a leader. The British tennis player Greg Rusedski went from fifty-sixth in the world rankings to sixth in a few months under the guidance of his coaches, first Brian Teacher and then Tony Pickard. Rusedski is a talented player and his coaches were able to inspire him to play to his talent. Great athletes lead by example and they usually have great coaches – who are leaders of a different sort. Coaches in business help a colleague solve a problem or improve at a task through discussion and guidance. When coaching deals with personal issues and where the personal qualities of the coach become as important as their business skills, then coaching shades into mentoring. You may not be able to pick your coach, but you always choose your mentor.

      A healer can be a leader, usually through the knowledge they have. Doctors and therapists are leaders when they lead people to greater health and well-being. Internal and external consultants can heal organizational rifts.

      A steward, someone entrusted to guard what is important, is another kind of leader. In his book Stewardship (Berrett-Koehler, 1996), Peter Block writes of service in the cause of a larger vision, of accountability, and an end to a blame and control culture in the workplace. Much of this I would apply to leadership. I use stewardship in a more limited sense: as a style of leadership.

      The steward’s role as a guardian of what is important and worth keeping is important, for example in business, for although businesses must continually renew themselves, too much change is as bad as too little. Without any change a company will freeze and stagnate into an uncompetitive dinosaur, but with too much change the company risks losing the valuable parts of its business. A steward identifies and preserves what is worth keeping, what keeps the company stable. That is successful change – keeping the good things about the present and letting go of the rest. Any leader must be a steward to some degree.

      Sometimes a designer is a leader. Designers shape our lives. Look round you and remember that all the man-made objects you see – buildings, furniture, clothes, cars and other machines – first began as ideas. Good designers lead the way in architecture, interior design, fashion and household appliances while others follow. You may never have met the architect who designed your house, but they influence your life every day. Leaders of fashion influence our choice of clothes, furniture, the music we listen to and the books and newspapers we read.

      Finally there are those leaders who simply provide a role model. Think of the people who have influenced you the most. They may have been in authority. They may have had more knowledge than you. But there was probably something extra – something personal. They embodied values you admired.

      I think a leader is also like a hero. The derivation of the word ‘hero’ is interesting. It means ‘to protect and serve’. Usually the word conjures up ideas of courage, saving lives, maybe winning medals for valour or overcoming impossible odds. But all heroes, even those from Hollywood movies, have another, inner task – they have to overcome a dragon in themselves, they have to go beyond themselves and develop the qualities they need to overcome their task. There is one sure way of telling the hero in a story – the person who has learned the most, the person who is changed the most at the end. Both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are heroes in the Star Wars series of films. They were not heroes at the beginning, but they became so by how