“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing. ” — Albert Schweitzer
The group that has innovation leadership innovates and can reap rewards beyond imagination. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve seen it happen many times, and so have you—beyond what anyone could imagine.
But this will happen only if its innovation leadership is embraced. Does this put an unbearable burden on the shoulders of leadership? Perhaps. But if you want your group to do something you’re not willing to do so yourself, you will most certainly fail.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a DaVinci, Nightingale or Einstein. You simply need to get as far out there as you can. You’ve got to make dead sure that you create an environment that encourages, nurtures and rewards innovation. And the best way to do that is by example. The example will never be perfect. It will mostly be muddling forward. But it has to be there and it has to be real.
But there’s another too-often overlooked aspect to leadership: leaders have to be finely tuned into their followers. It’s a nuanced activity and it’s constantly in motion.
In Certain Trumpets, Garry Wills explores the partnership between leaders and followers. The title of his book comes from a passage from St. Paul, “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” For there to be leadership, says Wills, there must be people willing to follow, with an agreed upon goal. Without them “the best ideas, the strongest will, the most wonderful smile have no effect.”
“When Shakespeare’s Welsh seer, Owne Glendower, boasts that ‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” Hotspur deflates him with the commonsense answer: “Why, so can I, or so can anyone. But will them come when you do call them?’ It is not the noblest call that gets answered, but the answerable call.”
Lincoln, says Wills, did not have the noblest vision of human equality in his day; the abolitionists did. But his career was developed mutually between his leadership and the followers “say” in where they were being led. “A leader who neglects that fact soon finds himself without followers. To sound a certain trumpet does not mean just trumpeting one’s own certitudes. It means sounding a specific call to specific people capable of response…. The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leader and followers.”
The bottom line: You don’t have to be the most innovative person on your team to lead a highly innovative program. You’ll have to stretch your abilities, for sure. You also need to find and embrace the innovators on the team—protect their efforts, work with them. And when you find your shared goal, your shared vision, make that certain call.
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