A common misconception is that to be a leader, you have to be the boss; this is simply untrue. While the terms are used interchangeably (admittedly by me as well), they aren’t the same thing because they entail different qualities. Not all leaders are bosses, and not all bosses are leaders. If mentioning this difference doesn’t spark an immediate flash of recognition about some of your former managers, you’ve been lucky.
True leaders exemplify integrity, and are not dishonest or bullies, and do not discriminate or harass. When they see this behavior in others, whether fellow leaders, their employees, or even their bosses, they do not tolerate it and they speak up to eliminate it. They risk whatever repercussions there may be, including even losing their jobs, in order to do what’s right.
Please do keep this concept front of mind as we explore the Five Ps.
The first of my Five Ps of Leadership—passion.
It’s crucial that a leader is passionate about what they do. Regardless of our work ethic, education, and experience, our company never would have gotten off the ground if we weren’t passionate about the notion of helping the world connect through translation. Without passion, we could never even have dreamed about all the hours we’d spend in the office. With every project we sold, no matter how small, we saw the purpose and value of our efforts. We enhanced other companies’ and people’s ability to communicate internationally, which allowed them to grow and diversify, saving everything from jobs to lives.
To be clear, I was able to work an obscene number of hours in the early days because it never felt like I was working. I felt like I was building a future, not just for myself but for the organizations that did business with us, as well as our employees. I sprang out of bed every morning, sometimes after only a couple of hours’ sleep, so excited that I had the privilege of waking up to what I was constructing.
Passion is the first of the Five Ps, but without the second P it’s just an inspirational saying that looks cute on a coffee mug. Prioritization is the second P because dreams and enthusiasm are not enough; you need solid goals and deadlines. The ability to prioritize is the alchemy that turns those dreams into gold.
Being able to prioritize time requires you to look inside yourself and understand your own productivity, because you can’t expect your team to be efficient if you yourself aren’t. For me, I know I’m happiest when I get an early start, even in my personal life, because I can lose motivation as the day goes on. When I set a goal, I make it the first thing I delve into in the morning, regardless of whether it’s working, reading, or exercising. If it’s important, I get it out of the way because I know I’ll feel better once it’s done. I figure out the metrics of whatever it is that I have to accomplish and then I hold myself accountable for completing the task.
As you advance in your leadership role, you’ll find that you have to delegate some of your decision-making. Regardless of how well you prioritize, it eventually becomes impossible to do it all yourself. The way to build a company is to make sure you eventually replace yourself; as you grow, you should transition to working on the business, rather than in the business.
The other half of the prioritization equation is prioritizing your expenditures. In the beginning, for every dollar you spend, make the highest percentage possible go toward sales and marketing, despite the fact that these are not “fun” buys. Above all, this means having the biggest and best sales team in the industry.
Once you figure out how to prioritize, everything will inevitably change, which brings us to the third P of leading—pivoting. The best leaders understand how important it is to be agile, whether they’re adjusting to a business shift or addressing a crisis.
The magic happens in the fourth P of leading—proactivity, which includes a culture of innovation.
Why do I consider proactivity to be magic? Because when you inspire your people to unleash their creativity, you not only increase employee satisfaction but you can also have a significant impact on your bottom line. In fact, companies where creativity is aligned with corporate culture have a 30% higher enterprise value growth and a 17% higher profit growth.
But what does it mean to be a company that proactively innovates?
Proactively innovating means not only encouraging employees to come to management with ideas but to reward them for doing so. I believed in holding innovation contests and we tied raises and promotions to producing new products and services. We did this by fostering an atmosphere where everyone felt comfortable offering suggestions, telling our employees that there were no bad ideas. We encouraged unorthodox thinking, and when we were presented with ideas we figured how we could make them work, rather than shooting them down, saying why they wouldn’t.
What differentiates a good employee from a great one is proactivity, so as a leader, you must encourage this trait. Proactivity is the difference between doing what you’re told and asking yourself what else you could be doing, whether it’s brainstorming a way to reduce errors or enhancing the clients’ experience. For example, my favorite managers were the ones who didn’t just send me what I requested, but instead proactively forwarded weekly or monthly updates about their team’s numbers and percentage toward goals.
Proactivity means that it’s everyone’s job to grow the company, and that can take many different shapes. Not coincidentally, our most proactive employees were the ones who earned the most promotions, bonuses, perks, and commissions.
The fifth P of Leadership can be the easiest facet, as well as the most difficult—people. Leadership boils down to getting others to get behind you in the pursuit of a goal. You can be a (somewhat less effective) leader without prioritization or proactivity or the ability to pivot or even passion, but without people, you’re just one person being effective all by yourself. Having people who believe in you and your vision is the most important part of being a leader. The caveat is, you must be a person of principle or your vision is just propaganda.
I agree with Google’s thinking that once you have the right people, you must get out of their way, but that starts with finding the right people. I specifically hired the kind of people who impressed me, who I thought were smarter than I was. I learned so much from them. Early on, I discovered that my success as a leader, and the company’s growth, would stem from having the best people on board. We were incredibly fortunate over the years to have hired so many of them.
My ideal employee was fresh out of college because these people were ready to be molded. I looked for those who were excited about the industry and our company. We found them in all the usual ways, from recruiting at colleges to placing ads in The New York Times and posting on job boards and, later, LinkedIn.
But how we recruited wasn’t nearly as important as who we brought on. We wanted those who sought an entrepreneurial experience. Working at the company was a first “real” job for many of our star performers. We found that we had the worst luck when we hired from our competitors, because these people didn’t have the same attitude as the new graduates. I’d take attitude, personality, and drive over experience any day of the week.
I found that the best way to lead these teams was to be with them. If they stayed late at the office, I was there with them, making sure we ordered pizza and later thanking them by buying them flowers or a gift card. I believe in recognizing employees by giving comp days and gifts for going above and beyond, and it was important to me that they’d know I’d never ask them to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.
My years of interviewing and hiring taught me to offer jobs only to those who shared my core values, which included the notion that it’s only arduous work if you’d rather be doing something else. My advice is to create an entire culture of like-minded people, those who want to work hard and play hard, because that will bond you to each other and produce the best results. Of course their skills and their backgrounds should be different and diverse, complementing yours and those of the rest of the team. But their mindset and values should align with yours.
Liz Elting is the founder and CEO of the Elizabeth Elting Foundation and the cofounder of TransPerfect.
Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion Into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business by Liz Elting. Copyright © 2023 by Pink Star LLC. All rights reserved. This book is available wherever books and e-books are sold.
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