Barbarians, Bureaucrats, and Beyond: The Leadership Traits that Matter

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Hey everyone, welcome to another five-minute leader. Today, I'm just warning you that it's going to be a little bit of a longer video, and before I jump into the video, first, I have to share the cool hat. There we go. Like that, future-ready? I also got the shirt. Look at that, future-ready? I'll probably make a little store where anybody who's interested can grab those things in the future, but for now, it's only something that I can wear, so I'm special.

Anyway, today's video is all about this concept of Barbarians to Bureaucrats. This is based on a book I read called Barbarians to Bureaucrats. It came out in 1989. The author is Lawrence Miller, and I thought it was a very interesting and timely book, especially for today's world, today's business environment, and today's business climate.

I wanted to go through some of the key qualities and characteristics of these different types of characters or leadership personality types that he put together in the book. So I jotted down some notes here. You're going to see me looking off-screen a little bit, just because there's no way I'm going to remember all this.

I want to go through these different types of leaders so you can identify what kind of leader you are and what kind of leader you work with. And this is because different types of situations and circumstances require a different type of leader. For example, when things are calm and peaceful, one type of leader might be better, as opposed to when things are very chaotic and hectic. If you're in a growth stage, you might need one type of leader, whereas if you are in a maintenance mode stage, where you've already grown and now you're just trying to maintain your competitive advantage, again, you might need a different type of leader there.

So, I'm going to quickly just outline these different types of characters. Obviously, there's a whole book written about it, you know, a couple hundred pages. Actually, you probably get through it in two days, 165 or so pages.