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Key Takeaways Leadership is a behavior, not a position.
One of the biggest mistakes is not understanding that behavior can be seen, while intent cannot be seen.
Inspiration might come and go, but trust has to be present, ever present.
What makes someone a leader? It’s a question that has sparked countless debates in boardrooms, offices, and business schools around the world. Effective leaders can create the right culture in an organization to harness all available resources and nurture the talent of the people they lead.
In elite teams, leaders act more like gardeners than managers. They see their role as providing an environment where the conditions are right for everyone to grow and flourish. While, like gardening, this certainly involves a fair measure of weeding out the wrong people and pruning the organization into the correct shape, elite-level leaders focus more on the growth of their people than anything else.
Nowhere is this more evident than in elite special operations units such as the US Navy SEALs. Rich Diviney is the founder of Attributes Incorporated. Rich spent more than 20 years leading Navy SEALs and has now transitioned that experience into helping corporations, sports teams and individual leaders become better at their jobs. His latest book, Masters of Uncertainty, examines how leaders navigate uncertain environments.
In this interview, we asked him to apply his views on leadership. His answers reveal a counterintuitive truth about leadership that challenges the traditional nature vs. nurture debate, and why he believes the most important leadership tool is something most people avoid.
Q1: What is the role of a leader from your perspective?
Diviney: The role of the leader is to create an environment that generates success, thriving and prosperity. We have to create that environment. We do that through modeling. We do that through culture building. We do that through behavior, and we do that by rewarding those people who are actually modeling or behaving the way we want to see. So our number one role is to set and create the environment.
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