Leadership Defined in "3" Words

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Leadership Defined in “3” Words

Darrielle Ehrheart, MBA, FACHE
Director Of Ambulatory Operations at Stanford Children's Health | Lucile
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Packard Children's Hospital Stanford
Published Mar 13, 2015
There are a number of blogs and discussion posts, most notably on Harvard Business
Review Group, asking "how to define leadership in one or two words" that seem to keep
surfacing on a regular basis. Words such as influence, wisdom, inspiration, passion, drive,
power, knowledge, credibility, energy, foresight, sensitivity, charisma, action, perseverance,
uniting, and responsible are just a few of the terms that are used to define leadership (out of
over 16,000 responses).
The problem is defining leadership isn’t quite that simple. Leadership is a complex
transformational process and therefore defining it in one or two words is also transitional. As
we mature and grow, the state of our leadership abilities change based on our experiences
and current situation. This means that all the terms used above and more truly describe great
leadership and are fluid within us.
In "3" Words
So instead of defining leadership as specific personal traits that are needed to be successful,
why don’t we define leadership in action terms? This allows us to take advantage of the
fluidity in personal traits to meet the differing situations we typically encounter. Personally, I
use these three words to define leadership and keep focused on terms that allow for personal
leadership traits to be effective:
Vision
Direction
Support
Vision
Your vision is really a simplistic word or two from your company’s vision/mission
statements that provide a singular focus for employees that is understandable within their
scope of work. For most of us the vision is really customer centric (e.g., The Customer).
Employees should focus their work and actions at all times to the customer.
The advantage of providing a vision is to give a kind of “rally call” to your work teams. If
all employees are working in concert toward a single focus, you then will create
opportunities for collaboration, communication, and teamwork. In looking at the traits
above, one can see that providing a vision uses many of these leadership traits.
Direction
Providing direction doesn’t mean telling others what, when, why, or how to solve a
challenge. Rather it’s about providing just enough information for others to be able to solve
the challenge on their own.
Employees typically don’t want to be told what to do. They want autonomy and direction to
help when they hit a road block to accomplishing the task at hand. Providing direction
allows the leader to be involved just enough to keep a tab on what’s going on and who’s
doing what, in addition to creating a contact an opportunity to influence and inspire those
receiving the direction. Again, direction provides the opportunity to use leadership traits to
keep employees moving down the right path.
Support
Developing support mechanisms is the most important aspect of leadership. Giving

employees what they need to be successful is critical to both meeting the vision and
motivating those performing the work.
No matter how many leadership traits you might have, if you can’t support those whom you
are leading, then it will be for nothing. Support mechanisms are both simple and complex.
Simple support is just being there when you are needed to provide direction or listen to what
is needed. Complex support is the network of resources that are available to meet the needs
and requests of those performing the work. Without providing support, no leadership trait
will elevate you into a position of credibility and respect.
Remember
Due to the nature and significance of leadership transformation, don’t believe in just one or
two traits to define yourself or your leadership style. Instead, embrace all the traits and allow
them to be fluid within you as your situation or role changes. The psychological aspect of
this will allow one to challenge conventional wisdom and assumptions of the “one size fits
all” leadership style. Fluidity allows leaders to be adaptive and responsive within the
framework of vision, direction, and support which is key to leadership success. Then again,
maybe we can define leadership in one word... Art.
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done
because he wants to do it” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
25
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Developing support mechanisms is the most important aspect of leadership. Giving

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