It was 1993 when I did my first startup, Comnet. One question was important for me to answer before we started. What kind of leader do I wish to be and what kind of collaborators would make Comnet different to organisations around us.
I answered it with the help of the grid you see below. I believed managers are four kinds:
1. Lost soul managers who make a lot of noise, blame everyone below and above them, and indulge in politics and gossip. In short, they invest low effort and create a low impact on things that matter.
2. The fence-sitter managers are those who work very hard but are indecisive when it comes to bold decisions. They are only efficiency-focused thus creating limited impact despite working very hard.
3. The leader manager is the one who not only works hard but also focuses on high-impact areas and employees love to work with them as there is energy and passion in the room.
4. The transformer leader is the one who understands that there is actually no correlation between effort and impact unless you add the spice of big innovative ideas in between. Transformation happens if you focus on innovations that drive breakthroughs and these transformers know how to innovate by doing stuff others considered impossible.
The choice of whom I wanted to be was quite clear and I went about collecting a group of Comnetians who wanted to be transformers in their lives and were bored or suffocated by not being allowed to flex their mental muscles.
The story of my life began when I became clear about whom I did not want to be and whom I wished I could be. The rest was working hard each day and ensuring I lived true to this grid despite failing many times in that journey as I have always believed that leaders are not born, they train themselves to become whom they were meant to be.
The question for you is this. Do you know what kind of manager you are and what is preventing you to move to the quadrant you wish you were in?