Jerry Seinfeld (Image credit: via @daylife)
Craftsmanship is the operative principle in the manual arts. We admire artists and artisans who make things with their hands yet we often overlook the concept when it comes to working with our minds.
So along comes Jerry Seinfeld to remind us, as all truly good comedians do, about the craft of comedy. As he revealed to Jonah Weiner in a New York Times magazine piece, he labors hard over single jokes, sometimes years. Not only does he craft the words he judges each work, or each phrase with the effect that it has upon the audience. He tinkers and tinkers, almost like Henry Ford did with the assembly line, trying always to simply, streamline, or even rearrange the words to deliver just the right punch and just the right time so audiences do not simply smile, but bust a gut.
That’s craftsmanship. What drives Seinfeld is beyond fame and fortune – he is revered in his field and worth according to Forbes $800 million. It is the desire to get it just right. “It’s similar to calligraphy or samurai,” Seinfeld told the Times. “I want to make cricket cages. You know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: solitude and precision, refining a tiny thing for the sake of it.”
But there is something else inside him that he revealed in his web-TV series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In the episode featuring Michael Richards, his co-star of his legendary sitcom Seinfeld, Jerry says that doing a show is not about what a performer gets from it. “Our job is not for us to enjoy. Our job is to make sure they [the audience] enjoy it. And that’s what we did [on Seinfeld].” It’s about the audience, making certain they are enjoying themselves.
Same can and should be said of leaders. Being in charge is not about the authority you possess; it’s what you do with the authority you exert. A leader’s job is to make things better for the organization. Those who use it for self-aggrandizement betray their authority; those who apply it to better the situation can emulate craftsman doing things slowly, carefully and exactly to get it right. So how can a leader refine the leadership craft? Let me offer three suggestions on the art and practice of leadership.
Think. Consider what you want to accomplish with your power. Every craftsman has a picture in his head about what he would like to create, be it a desk, a meal or a garden. A leader can apply thinking to the organizational mission and apply his talents and skills toward fulfilling it for self and for team.
Act. How will you apply your power to accomplish your mission. And in this regard the leader takes a step back. The craft of leadership arises when you put the right people in place to do good things. And act to ensure that they have the resources and support they need to do their jobs well.
Reflect. What did I accomplish? Most craftsmen I know seldom appreciate their own work but they enjoy the work of fellow craftsmen, as Seinfeld appreciates the work of other comedic performers. Yet a leader needs to be more introspective by comparing the vision to the results. Did we – the people on the team and me – achieve what we set out to do? How well did we do it? And what will we do better the next time?
These ideas are merely starting points. Too much focus on the internals of leadership can lead to a kind of myopia, an “inside baseball” approach that reduces leadership to paint by numbers rather than a balance of doing what it right for the mission with what’s right for the people who abide by the mission. That is focus on people as well as what they do.
Regarding leadership as a craft forces the leader to consider leadership as both art and practice. The practice comes from doing it; the art comes from knowing when to do it. And getting it right most of the time. Just like a fine craftsman.
