Great Leaders
I'm in bed trying to get some sleep before my flight to LA tomorrow, but I've been meaning to write a post regarding my thoughts on leadership for a while. It will be hard to make an essay out of this post as my thumbs are already tired of typing on my BB.
I am tired of the term "leader" being thrown around these last few years. I heard the term a lot at school, and even more at church (TFH). People have lots of different ideas as to what they think makes a great leader. And of course, I have my own opinion on this matter. There are four different people that I find to be the greatest "leaders" of today, and you've probably only heard of one or two of them. They are:
1) Mark Zuckerberg
2) Mark Cuban
3) David Heinemeyer-Hansson
4) Sean Parker
Yes, I know that they are all geeks and very tech-centric. I regard Zuckerberg as the number one leader because he has bigger cajones than everyone else on the list combined (for not selling to Yahoo last year).
There are a few things that characterize these great leaders.
1) They have the balls to take criticism -- lots of it
2) They are unpopular with a lot of people
3) They all give the finger to "the man", and in doing so, become THE MAN
4) They are not afraid of telling people which end is up -- explicatives are often used by Cuban and DHH to drive a point home to idiots
5) They are all atheist/agnostic/humanist, which means not very "religious"
6) They are more important to the the world than the media will ever admit, simply because the media doesn't like them
Obviously, being liked has nothing to do with changing the world. Looks like the only people that need to like you are your employees, and the rest of the world can devolve on its own without guys like this. Well, having a great product also helps a helluva lot.
As Ali-G would sign off, "Respect yo."