16 Things I learned from being a leader (Part 1)
Date Posted: December 4th, 2009
For the past two years I’ve been in at least one leadership position. In Fall 2007 I was president of Swing Ann Arbor (SAA) — University of Michigan’s Swing Dancing Student Group — and took over as choir director for Cynnabar’s Singing Group. (Cynnabar is the Ann Arbor chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism.) I finished my tour of duty with SAA in May 2008, and in Fall 2008 I took over the Minister of Arts and Sciences (MOAS) position for Cynnabar. In that time I’ve learned a thing or two about leadership. Below is a list of 8 things I’ve learned during that time. You’ll get another 8 things on Monday.
1 ) Easiest Way to Make Connections
As a leader, you are visible to your group. People are more likely to remember your name. You’ll have to interact with others in order do complete your projects. Really, it’s a no brainer. As a leader you will meet people.
When I was president of SAA, I presided over meetings. That alone got people to recognize me. I also acted as a bridge between SAA and the other Ann Arbor swing group, so I interacted with the other group too. To this day, I’m still mostly remembered by the Ann Arbor swing people that were around during my tour of service even though I haven’t been dancing in months. More than that, I wouldn’t have any reservation about asking them to help me organize an event or something.
2 ) People who never talked to you before will all of a sudden take an interest in you
This is something that’s sort of distressed me, but seems to come with the territory. People who wouldn’t give you the time of day when you weren’t in a position of power — even if you were an active member before — will now remember your name and talk to you. This happened both as SAA president and as MOAS. If you’re anything like me, you’ll wonder how to treat these people. Is it that they’re attracted to power or something?
I struggled with this for a while until I realized something: Unless you’re in a leadership position you personally aren’t vital to the functioning of the group. You aren’t someone that a general member of the group ought to know. There’s only so much time and energy in your life, it’s best to spend it on important people (and people who you likely to like). A leader qualifies as an important person. I don’t totally agree with this philosophy, but I can understand it… and may even unconsciously act on it too. So, yeah, just because someone gives you the time of day primarily because you’re a leader doesn’t necessarily make them bad people. 
3 ) Service is King
People will love you and want to work with you if you do service. With the MOAS position I volunteered to take care of room scheduling and that’s done a lot to endear the other leaders to me. Same thing with being choir director. The more you give, the more get. The important thing here is not to do service with the expectation that you’re going to get anything out of it other than the joy of seeing something work well. People will sense your ulterior motives and won’t like you all that much.
4 ) Detaching Yourself from Your Ideas is a good thing
I mentioned this in my last post on detachment. Basically if you want to get a proposal passed you have to be detached from most of the details. For example, in SAA I wanted to try a totally new schedule for classes. I wanted to turn SAA into more of a teaching organization than a social dance organization. That took quite a bit of doing. I made an extensive proposal that took account of everything, but most importantly I left lots of areas open to adjustment. I didn’t care how we phased it in or where the extra practices took place. What I cared about was that that there were more classes and that we changed things fairly soon.
The proposal got passed, and of all the things I tried to start while President, I think that was the most successful.
5 ) Contempt is Bad
In Gladwell’s book Blink
Unsurprisingly, if you have contempt for the people you’re working with you’re in for a bad experience. Within a few months of being the head of SAA I developed contempt for my fellow board members, and unsurprisingly things went downhill from there. Ah, hindsight. Whatever you do, when you notice yourself developing disrespect for your anyone in organization WATCH OUT. Chances are there’s been some misunderstanding.
6 ) Criticism comes with the Job
When you’re in a leadership position, someone’s inevitably going to criticize you. It’s OK. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. What it does mean is you need a method for dealing with it. If you take it personally, feel sorry for yourself, and ask why they aren’t attacking other people in the group… you’ll be doing a disservice to everyone else you’re serving.
7 ) No matter what you do not everyone will be happy
Going on #6, not only will you be criticized, but not everyone will be happy with your decisions. Even your good decisions. The way to know if your decisions are actually good is to ask yourself “is this aligned with where the group wants and/or needs to go?” You also need to look at the criticism you receive, see the criticism.
If you’ve determined the criticism is misguided, should you try to convince the other person of their wrongness? It depends mostly on how much you need to have them on your side and how much time you have. And even then, if you explain your position carefully and well and explain why their response doesn’t make sense and the response is to reiterate their position… it’s probably not worth your time to pursue it further.
8 ) The Loudest Person does not necessarily represent the whole group
This can be really hard to remember. In the choir the majority of the people there don’t have a strong opinion on the music, but one or two people do. I want people to feel welcome to give their opinions and know that it will be heard and acted upon. At the same time I know that it’s not always a good idea to obey what those one or two people suggest just because I’m trying to be amenable to other ideas.
It’s a balancing act. Sometimes it’s wise to listen. Sometimes it’s not. Again, this is best when you have a clear idea of what to measure up suggestions to. Is it aligned with what the group wants to do? How much time is being spent arguing points that don’t have clear answers? Etc.
More to come on Monday!
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