Imitating others won't mimic their success

Developing your own leadership style, to maximise the chances of business success.

I had a manager once say “we want to be like WhatsApp when we sell the business, super small and highly productive”. However, this was 10 years after WhatsApp was bought by Meta (Facebook at the time) and the world was different then. The question I posed was, is that still possible with the change in the world over the last 10 years, and is this idea as ground breaking as WhatsApp was then? I did so because they were able to do what they did because circumstances allowed them to, and following their business model doesn’t mean we can replicate their success.

Whilst we can learn from others experiences, mistakes, and successes to let them guide our own development and growth; we should never blindly mimic them in the hopes of replicating their successes. Other people are who they are based upon their experiences and how they shaped them; you should always allow yours to shape you.

This post talks about how you can understand and develop your own leadership style.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

All it takes is 10 minutes on Instagram or LinkedIn to see the army of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, or Joe Rogan clones. Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs, Elon Musk is Elon Musk. You can’t copy someone else’s style and expect to replicate their success; whilst you may find momentary success what happens when the next “great” leader comes into public consciousness - will you change and mimic them?

Let’s look at the music industry, you have bands and cover bands; it is very unlikely that the cover band will have more success than the original band - they may be successful, but they won’t sell out arenas like the original did.

Another example is “own-brand” products in supermarkets. Quite often the quality isn’t as high, and the taste isn’t as good; that’s not to say that personal preferences won’t impact sales. However, a supermarket will never sell another own brand product; through imitation you limit your opportunities.

The point is this, whilst you may find limited success, you are very unlikely to exceed the success of the original; by imitating someone else you set a cap on your own potential success.

Losing, and finding, yourself - building your own leadership style.

I believe that by only ever trying to replicate someone else’s personality, leadership style, or business model; you lose yourself and become a parody of the original. What’s worse is when you find yourself in a new situation, and your way of leadership is built on someone else, you may find yourself lost because you don’t know WWED - What would Elon do?

This isn’t to say you can’t have success through “copying” someone; however when we look at case studies of successful businesses and people who do this, they offer something that the other doesn’t or change something that they think needs changed.

I think the key aspect behind all these great leaders is that their style comes from their experiences, and you can do the same; allow your experiences to shape who you are as a leader.

• Speak in your own voice - don’t try and use other’s words, use your own.

• If you experience a “bad” leader - see what they do and avoid it.

• If you experience a great “leader” - look at what makes them great and find your own way of replicating it.

• If you don’t like the way in which something is done - do it differently, learn from what worked and what didn’t and keep adapting.

• If you read something interesting - integrate it into your way of working and see how it does. Learn and adapt accordingly.

Defining a leadership style

A “leadership style” may seem like an ephemeral or intangible thing, but it really isn’t. You can define a leadership style, by stating what you do and don’t do in certain situations; and how that changes when you are doing it or being a part of it. The latter may seem to be in conflict with a “leadership” style, but by knowing what you don’t want to happen when you are in the situation, it can help us identify how we can lead others.

This exercise is done across 6 key areas that we often find ourselves in when navigating the waters of business: Knowledge, Conflict, Discussion, Delivery, Communication, Planning. I state situations in each of these that I frequently encounter, but they aren’t ironclad and can be changed to fit what you think works best; as this post is all about - take what works for you and adapt to what will work best moving forward.

For example here is my leadership style definition - I typically do this exercise in a table with the “do” and “don’t” as columns but as Substack doesn’t allow for that we will have to deal with the slightly more unwieldy formatting:

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Example of a Leadership Style Definition

Knowledge

• When teaching I…

  • Do:

    • Guide others to the solution

    • Adapt my approach to the learner

  • Don’t:

    • Initially explicitly tell them the solution

    • Withhold the information if they are struggling to understand

• When learning I…

  • Do:

    • Read and understand the limitations

  • Don’t:

    • Want the answer given to me

    • Copy blindly

Conflict

• When challenged I…

  • Do:

    • Want to understand the reason and cause for the disagreement

    • Ask questions to better understand the suggested approach

  • Don’t:

    • Blindly defend my position

• When challenging others I…

  • Do:

    • Challenge with respect.

    • Ask questions about the current approach to find areas where it can be improved

    • Highlight areas of improvement, and why another approach may be valuable.

    • Set a time limit to persuade someone, and proceed as normal if I have failed to do so.

  • Don’t:

    • Attack the individual or personalise the criticism

    • Refuse to proceed unless this is done.

Discussion

• When questioned I…

  • Do:

    • Give one of three answers: I know and here is the answer, I can’t tell you and here is why, I don’t know and I will come back to you when I do with one of the other answers.

  • Don’t:

    • Outright reject the question or ignore it

• When questioning others I…

  • Do:

    • Outline why this information is valuable to me

    • Push for information if it is needed for me to do my job

  • Don’t:

    • Ask questions I know the person doesn’t have answers to

    • Accept boilerplate or “PR” answers

Delivery

• When leading teams I…

  • Do:

    • Set clear objectives and goals that define what success looks like

    • Allow the freedom for discussion and approaches

    • Set clear timelines and landmarks

    • Provide context as to why we are doing the task

    • Create a channel for updates and communication of progress

  • Don’t:

    • Micromanage the delivery of tasks

    • Set unnecessary meetings

• When part of a team I…

  • Do:

    • Ask for clear objectives and goals that define success

    • Ask for timelines that need to be met

    • Ask for context around the project

  • Don’t:

    • Accept micromanagement of tasks

Communication

• When updating others I…

  • Do:

    • Provide the information they need to know

    • Provide context as to why it is important

    • Adapt my update to the audience to facilitate understanding

    • Understand why they are looking for the update and provide what they need to do their job.

  • Don’t:

    • Go into unnecessary detail

    • Reject follow up questions

• When receiving updates I…

  • Do:

    • Outline why I need the update

    • Ask the questions I need to do what I need to do.

  • Don’t:

    • Derail the update into another type of meeting

Planning

• When planning a strategy I…

  • Do:

    • Outline why it is important

    • Set definitions of success and timelines

    • Set parameters and limitations for the current strategy

    • Talk and plan with relevant or impacted teams

    • Assess the “finalised” strategy to see whether it provides the initial target value

  • Don’t:

    • Fully define the strategy in isolation

• When being updated on, or being part of planning, the next strategy I…

  • Do:

    • Require definitions of success and timelines

    • Ask questions that are relevant to my team

    • Think about dependencies that arise

    • Challenge with respect to understand any potential issues

  • Don’t:

    • Proceed without understanding what success looks like

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This exercise is incredibly useful when helping you identify your own leadership style, and when helping others develop theirs too. As I said when introducing this, adapt the statements as needed to suit what works best for you; these are the statements that I find useful.

I have found it to be a great tool for introspection and reflection; which will enable your personal growth and development.

Own your leadership style

Through building your own leadership style, you give yourself the tools to succeed. Most importantly, you learn how to adapt to new situations in front of you. For example, how businesses dealt with COVID and the accompanying lockdowns; great leaders used their experience and skills to adapt offerings to address the current circumstances we all found ourselves in - but I believe that’s only possible if you have your own way of leading.

You may never be as successful as your business idols, but through your own leadership style you give yourself the greatest chance of the highest levels of success; use others as inspiration, and be who you want to be. The greatest potential that this approach has is that you can then be the inspiration for someone else; which I think is one the biggest indications of great leaders.

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Grand. Thanks for your time.