This month’s book recommendation, by Brad Feld, is a guide for building community. Brad tracks decades of work that led Boulder, Colorado to become a “Silicon Valley” community in a relatively unknown town.
The book reads to me as much more than a primer for a start-up community, though that’s of great interest to our foundation work. It reads as a primer for life.
Feld points out the crucial difference between advice and guidance, and the book often cautions against the dangers of any individual leader trying to control community building. This distinction got me thinking about my own leadership style and how I interact with others.
I asked Claude, my AI assistant, to define control, advice, and guidance:
“Control” implies a desire to dictate behavior, while “guide” suggests leading or directing someone with their best interests in mind. Guidance focuses on empowering individuals to make their own informed decisions, whereas control seeks to impose a specific outcome. “Advice,” when given constructively, can be a part of guidance, but when delivered with a controlling tone, it can be perceived negatively.
When we are being helpful, whose interests come first? Hint: Brad’s soon-to-be-published new book is titled: “Give First.”
The controlling approach might have worked in previous generations, but times have changed. Working with loved ones, friends, employees, and peers today requires recognizing that strength is in community. I now ask myself:
- Am I supporting someone to advance my interest or theirs?
- Do I really know what their interests are?
- Do they know what their interests are?
Today, we each have far more control over our own situation than ever before. Passive resistance has become an art form. So, you will rarely notice when someone in the organization disagrees with your (command and control) approach…until it’s too late.
In a scene from the mindless comedy, “Old School”, Will Ferrell announces to the party “we’re going streaking through the quad!” and keeps yelling and laughing as he runs naked out of the building and down the street, never noticing that no one is following him.
The humor is based on truth. Had it not been a comedy, Ferrell’s character would have asked his friends first, then everyone at the party, where they would like to go—if they wanted to go anywhere at all. True leadership means being sure people want to join in before you start running naked.
The lesson from both Brad Feld’s community building work and Will Ferrell’s fictional streaking adventure is the same: Effective leaders gather and guide rather than control, and they always put the community’s interest first.
Peace,
Tim McCarthy
