“What's your leadership style?” Asked me someone recently. You probably thought about how you'd answer this very minute. It's an interesting question, even as it demanded we peel it back a little bit. This is done behind the scenes, very quickly, yet we do it.
My first instinct was to focus on the suffix -ship as action. I started to think about how I behave in different situations based on context – what's required of me, what I require.
Then I got curious and looked up the suffix's meaning. It's a word-forming element that means “quality, condition; act, power, skill; office, position; relation between.”# From Middle English and Proto-Germanic, not surprisingly.
Because if I wanted to say leadership in Italian, I would want to first understand what qualities I'm talking about and in relation to what act or office. Then, I could say direction, guide, or command. Mind you, German has an ever longer list of words – die Führung, die Leitung, die Regierung, die Anführung, der Vorsitz – curiously all of them feminine, except for the last one.
Which explains why I could think of clear examples of qualities in leaders I admire and have met, but leadership remained very fuzzy and generic. Something that tries to be all things to all people ends up standing for nothing. A lesson for brands.
Yet, we use the suffix as a convenient way to create a whole category, when we might in fact prefer to say someone or something is guiding or directing. Which brings up the other issue with categorizing – based on what value? We're less inclined to embrace command and control, unless we have no other options.
But I got the idea in the question from the style part. Basically, what kind of a leader are you? Which implies something we often forget – we all lead from wherever we are, and hopefully based on what the situation demands. Your mileage may vary in liking the answer in this case.
I love the word style, because it's a simple way to talk about how a person, group or an era combines what it knows, says, and does that is specific to them into the tangible things they create and leave behind. We put a bit of ourselves into our work. The degree depends on whether the word leader means guide, direct, or command if we're talking about the person who influences or has direct impact on the work, not just on us. To measure, we need to see, alas, not just feel.
However, much of what we choose to do is based on what we feel rather than what we say. Language gets us in trouble because we may not be clear on what we mean, or misunderstand what someone said not knowing why and when they said it.
I wish we took greater care with our words, there are unspoken rules attached to them. Our meanings would keep up with our imaginings if we were as willing to augment our vocabulary as we are with our experiences. Leaders impact culture when their -ship gets into port, conquering a bigger slice of the public's imagination. Their actions outlasting those of others.
Ben Horowitz says, What you Do is Who you Are [via Fred Wilson], noting that a few leaders managed to shape their time. His question — “how do you create and sustain the culture you want?” — may well be crucial to every organization. The specifics boil down to how we make decisions. A helpful guidance, as the set of assumptions we use to solve problems based on context is the stuff that makes culture.
I was reading over the weekend a story about Italian entrepreneur Patrizio Dei Tos, founder of Itlas in Cordignano, Treviso area in the Trentino Alto Adige region. He had the wind knocked out of him one night when the storms pushed to more than 124 miles per hour in Vaia, near the Carezza Lake. A caress it was not. Reinhold Messner compared it to the mount Everest storms.
The windstorm uprooted more than one million cubic feet of forest. Last spring's snow tempest uprooted an additional 350,000 cubic feet of beech trees. A year later, Dei Tos is helping clean up the area with another ten woodland firms. “We should be done by the end of the year,” he said in a recent interview. Itlas produces hardwood floors.
Typically the industry picks up between 350,000 - 424,000 cubic feet of wood per year. An abundance of trees drove the price down to the point that Chinese companies got interested. Proximity and existing commercial channels helping make it appealing.
But speculation wasn't on his mind. Because this was a tragedy in his home territory. Veneto Agriculture is the region's organization that manages the forest. Itlas thought of them and decided to pay the same amount he would have paid before the storms for the wood. That is about $93 per cubic foot vs. the 93 cents to $1.25 they pay from France to Bulgaria today.
Why would he do that? “It's a question of heart. I've come to these woods since I was a child,” he said. “My grandparents used to bring their animals to pasture here. Casiglio is part of our history. How could I profit on Vaia?”
There's also a bit of marketing investment in his decision. His company is tied to the territory, its future depends on the forest and should contribute to create the Cansiglio brand. Not just for the certified hardwood floors, but tourism, the food and sport industries. Everyone benefits.
Some entrepreneurs sponsor the football team, Dei Tos wants to sponsor the forest. His thinking is how we can regenerate the territory and our community, by investing in it. A story rooted in history is easier to appreciate. It gives it roots into purpose.
There's a reason why the ax masters of Venice used Caniglia beech for the oars of the Republic's fleet — they grow at about 3,300 feet of altitude on a terrain that has little water. They're extremely resilient, yet very flexible, tall, yet fairly thin. The ideal trees for such construction as the chairs produced in Udine for years.
Turning everything into money, we forget the intrinsic value of things. After the war these magnificent trees were reduced to toothpicks, and they were used by industry that way. The Vaia storms may have reduced a forest to toothpicks. But we don't have to — we can lead a renewal of their use with our actions, a Renaissance of sorts.
Ideas drive decisions, in turn our ideas are rooted in culture, as in Patrizio Dei Tos' example. What do our linguistic memes say about modern society's culture? Perhaps a conversation for another time. For now, we do know what kind of leader Dei Tos is — he's a guardian of his places.
I don't know if you'd consider it a viable marketing strategy. But that's a style that speaks volumes about his culture. And it's reason it connects.
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Note: Here's a video where Patrizio Dei Tos, CEO of ITLAS Labor Legno, explains how starting from an unexpected dismissal, takes the ball to create his company that will become a leader in the wood sector. Step by step you can build a big project while always paying attention to the market.