When you think of a truly great leader, who springs to mind? Winston Churchill? Mahatma Gandhi? Martin Luther King? All great candidates for sure, but I have another that I’m willing to bet you’ve never thought about.
Andrew John Ridgeley.
Allow me to explain.
Back in the 1970s Georgios Panayiotou (known to his friends as “Yog”) was a slightly overweight, shy, bespectacled kid at a school in southern England. Through a mutual love of music, he became friends with the much better-looking and far more popular Andrew Ridgeley. The two lads shared a dream to be in a famous pop group and eventually, in 1981 realised that ambition. Yog changed his name to the more accessible George Michael and together with his best friend Andrew launched the band Wham! You may have heard of them.
Over the next five years Wham! enjoyed nothing short of a stellar pop career. They played sell-out concerts all around the world and achieved a level of success beyond even their wildest dreams. But among all of the fame and accolades, there was a problem brewing.
Bluntly speaking, George was the real talent in the group and Andrew Ridgeley recognised this. George was the better singer and the more innovative song-writer. He had emerging musical ambitions far beyond the mainstream pop market that Wham! dominated in the 1980s.
Now, having taken a less popular kid under his wing, helped him out of his shell and onto the path to stardom, Andrew could be forgiven for being more than a little jealous. But he wasn’t. Instead, knowing that he was now holding George back from even greater achievements, he did an amazing thing.
He simply got out of the way.
In what George called “the most amicable split in pop history” Wham! played their final concert in 1986, following which George Michael went on to become one of the biggest music stars in history.
And this is why I think that Andrew Ridgeley should also join the ranks of the greatest leaders we’ve ever seen. Think about some of the traits of excellent leadership:
Leaders build people up
Leaders help people to realise their dreams
Leaders don’t stand in the way of talented people around them
Andrew Ridgeley exemplifies all of these things and more. How many “leaders” that you’ve worked for could justifiably say the same?
I’ve seen fragile people in authority hogging the limelight and trying to build themselves up at others’ expense. I’ve worked with many, many people whose dreams went unrealised because they sat outside of a leader’s current ambitions. I’ve spoken to talented, but bitter people who felt stifled because their boss refused to see where their real value lay.
Sadly, there is a lot more of the latter behaviour among our leaders than the former.
Yes, it’s hard for a leader when they recognise that a supremely able person in their team has the potential to achieve far more than they can. But it happens and so if and when it does, what will you do about it?
Will fear let you hold them back?
Or could you too be an Andrew Ridgeley and, having built that person up as far as your skills allow, get out of their way and let them really fly?
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