Captainship, not leadership

Whenever I hear the word leadership, this is the first thing I think about…

After steeping into American corporate culture for 10+ years, leadership has become just another ingredient of the corp-speak soup. It’s a word so bloated it has lost all its meaning. I f*cking hate it.

My #1 pet peeve is when leadership is used to indicate some nebulous echelon of people at the top who are supposed to make big business decisions. "We should really talk to leadership about that" … Who the f*ck is leadership anyway?

So, as an antidote to this nonsense, I have settled on a narrow, bullsh*t-free definition of leadership that I call captainship.

I know what you are thinking. “Ale, this is super generic, you promised me specific advice!” Fair enough. How do you spot captainship in the wild then? It often comes as one of these two behaviors.

1) The captain sprung people into action, moving the group from a passive state to an active one.

• A group of people were doing nothing.

• One of them (the captain) did/said things.

• People started doing something.

2) The captain changed people's behaviors from A to B.

• A group of people were doing A.

• One of them (the captain) did/said things.

• People started doing B.

In other words, captainship is the ability to spring people into action and/or to change the direction of what people are doing. When people do things because of you, you are a captain.

I like this definition for 3 reasons.

1. It is concrete and thus bullsh*t-proof. Next time you hear someone say something like “X person demonstrated leadership in group Y while doing project Z” ask them “What specific actions did X do that changed group Y’s behavior and project Z’s outcome?” You’ll be surprised how many people remain speechless when you ask this simple question.

2. It highlights how captainship has nothing to do with reporting lines, hierarchical structures, and corporations. You might have direct reports or not but it doesn't matter. All that matters is: are you able to change people's behaviors?

3. It is easy to explain to and apply for people asking for advice on how to grow their captainship or start their captainship journey.

Wanna grow your captainship? Start by helping one person achieve one of their goals. If your actions and/or words create some positive impact (i.e. change) for the people around you, that’s captainship. Congratulations! You are a captain!

-Ale

P.S. What did you think about this post? Reply to let me know!