The Three Levels of Leadership
I always enjoy reading books on leadership and also engage in intelligent conversations with friends, business partners, CEOs and also friends in the government sectors on leadership.
Speaking about this topic, I would like to share a memorable moment whereby an intelligent lady, Wendy from Shanghai, shared her perspective on leadership with me.
I remember, I was drinking Chinese tea with Wendy and her husband in their balcony overlooking a very nice garden with a waterfall and Wendy started to share her thoughts on the various levels of leadership.
She mentioned that to run a small business, well, a person must have wit. To manage a mid-size company well, a person must have wisdom. To do big things, a person must have a big heart.
Let us take closer look at the three levels of leadership. The first level which is to run a smart business well or an individual contributor. Success comes from having wit and the ability to come up with creative ideas. I used to have a colleague in Singapore by the name of Mun. He is always the top in his sales division and he achieved that by working smart.
In the evening when everyone has gone off from the office, he would run promotions using fax software on his laptop. He left the fax software to mass fax the promotions and next day when he is back there are leads for him to follow up. The promotions or the pulling effect got him results and he was always the top in sales.
The second type of leadership ability, I call it leadership through wisdom. I met a Malaysian entrepreneur in Indonesia. This man by the name of Jack in just a matter of 12 years build a company from nothing into a multi-million dollar business employing hundreds of staff.
Jack has a lot of energy coupled with wisdom. He saw the size of consumer market in Indonesia and being only a young man in his twenties that time, he managed to convince many leading brands such as Pocari, Sensodyne and many other companies to let him be the distributor. It is certainly amazing that Jack, through his wisdom and drive, beat many other people to get strategic distributorship of products that led to building a powerful organization.
The third type of leadership, is leading with a big heart. Mahatma Gandhi once said: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” There is so much wisdom in this saying. A true leader must learn to overlook others’ offense. He simply will not be easily bogged down by lots of emotional baggage’s and focuses on the big picture.
Another great leader the late President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who was wrongly imprisoned for 27 years when he was released jokingly remarked: "I went for a long holiday for 27 years.” He did not bear any grudges.
Hence, if a person wants to run a small business well, he must have wit. In order to run a mid-size company well, he needs to have wisdom. In order to do big things, in addition, to wit and wisdom, he needs to have a big heart.
You can check out our selection of “lid lifting books” here, categorized by different topics such as Leadership, Personal Growth, Family and more, to find out how you can expand your wit, wisdom and heart in order to grow as a leader.