the best leadership advice ever

What makes a great leader?

The answer to that might be different for every individual, every team, every organisation and every sector.

Despite that there are a LOT of leadership gurus out there, offering nuggets of wisdom of varying degrees of usefulness. Some are true for certain roles, or for particular times in your career, or if you happen to be a 25 year old tech-bro in Silicon Valley.

But for me the most useful piece of leadership advice, and one that applies to EVERY situation, comes from someone who would definitely not have presented herself as a guru – the writer and activist Maya Angelou.

Angelou’s work is full of wisdom, drawn from her own experiences and her perceptive philosophy about people and the world. If you aren’t familiar, I highly recommend checking her out, if only through a Good Quotes website.

The quote I want to focus on today is this one:

“People won’t remember what you said. People won’t remember what you did. But people will remember how you made them feel.”

When I’m coaching, I often ask people to think back to the leaders they’ve worked for in the past and what made them great (or not so great).

The answers are never about the work. They are always about how the leaders made them feel.

The leaders that people remember most fondly, the ones that they want to emulate, are the ones that made them feel safe.

Not cossetted or infantized, but that they were being told the truth and that someone would look out for their interests whenever possible.

People also talk about leaders that offered supportive challenge, that gave praise when due and helpful feedback when needed.

What each individual needs and values will vary. But when people look back on working with you, it will be how you show up that they remember - not your amazing creativity or your technical knowledge.

Sometimes it can be tempting as a leader to want to dazzle people with our brilliance, to prove that we have earned that place at the metaphorical head of the table. But being a leader isn’t about being the smartest person in the room, it’s about being the person who makes everyone else feel like they can achieve.

There is another side to this, too, which is less often spoken about and is more important than ever.

The first and most important rule of having a presence is that you have to be present.

I don’t mean just turning up to things - I mean actually being present. Not looking at your phone, not checking your emails, not thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch. I mean being fully present in the conversation you’re having.

It’s very easy in online meetings to let your attention wander. Or for a day working from home to run away with you and to realise you haven’t got back to that person who needed something. Or to be so overwhelmed with our own work that we miss when someone else is struggling.

I have definitely done all of these things.

It’s understandable. We’re human.

But if people can tell that you have something you’d rather be doing than talking to them, that will be what they remember. Not what you said, but that you made them feel overlooked and unimportant.

All of this is true not just of the people you manage, but your peers and colleagues in other teams too.

The key to great leadership is being able to step back and take notice of the impact you are having on people around you. How are you making people feel?

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