One Size Fits One

I have very large feet. Not large in the NBA basketball player sense, but certainly large in the everyman sense. It has always been hard for me to buy socks. One-size-fits-all socks do not fit me. Shopping at the “Big and Tall” store as a teenager was really terrible. Currently, online shopping has made my life much easier as I can buy size 13-15, which is perfect.

Community is complicated, in part, because community tends toward one-size-fits-all due to the need for efficiency. The smaller the community, the more specialized it can be. For instance, a nuclear family can tend to the specific individual needs of its members. The larger the community, the more generalized it will be. (Think every Federal program ever!)

While some things are handled better at scale, leadership isn’t one of them. Not that we can’t lead large communities—we can. However, successful leaders don’t lead the community; they lead individuals. Those individuals then lead individuals who lead individuals and so on. Scale is achieved through specialization.

Scale doesn’t always mean large in the current physical size sense. Scale can also mean large in the expanse of time sense. Either, or both, requires the same specialization. Leaders must develop leaders. Vince Lombardi said, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else—through hard work.”

Develop means to grow and become more mature and advanced. Leaders don’t create leaders out of nothing; they find people with leadership potential and then help the person grow that potential.

There are myriad skills and qualities needed for leadership, but let’s focus on a few that are necessary for ethical and moral leadership. It should go without saying that for a leader to help another person develop these qualities, they must possess them themselves. I’ll give you some free advice: if it should go without saying, you should probably say it!

Humility is the single most important quality a leader can have. Humility is the ability to recognize the equal value of everyone. When we do, we can then learn from them. Leaders who fail to acknowledge they don’t have all the answers are destined for failure. We learn humility by practicing several small, daily actions: being open to and accepting feedback, acknowledging our mistakes, asking questions, being grateful, and putting others first.

Communication is the most important tool for helping other leaders develop. People cannot learn what they don’t understand. We must constantly and consistently communicate our vision, intention, and ideology. In the absence of the story you should be telling, people will make up their own. Communication is the key to learning and understanding. Leaders who do not communicate transparently are trying to hold on to their power, not invest it in others.

Empathy is critical for moral and ethical leadership. Unless we understand what our community is like for those with no power, we will be in danger of abusing ours. If we are willing to acknowledge our biases and practice active listening, we can begin to understand our community from other people’s viewpoints.

Resilience, the capacity to withstand and recover from difficulties, is how we lead a community through the inevitable hardships we all face. Interestingly, acceptance is the first step to resilience. There is a reason recovery is “one day at a time.” Denying reality isn’t practical or helpful.

Vision is what pulls everything else together and creates the goal for the journey the community is on. Vision begins with what and who we are and moves toward what we want and can be. Vision requires that we dream big. The best way to learn that is to spend time with people who do it.

As leaders, we should be in the business of growing leaders. We should be giving our power away to those who are coming behind us and giving them the qualities, skills, and tools to use that power ethically and morally. Leaders are not socks. Growing leaders is a one-size-fits-one venture. Developing leaders is the key to scaling (size or longevity), and it is the Bison Way.