What is Leadership? A Former Canon CEO’s Definition

By Andreas Petterson, Former CEO (Canon Company) & Founder of Leaders ADAPT

Everyone thinks they know what leadership is.

They’re wrong.

After building a company from zero to 150 employees as Canon’s youngest CEO, then working with 200+ CEOs in my masterminds, I can tell you this: 99% of leadership definitions are bullshit designed to sell books, not build companies.

Here’s what leadership actually is:

Leadership is the ability to create outcomes that wouldn’t exist without you – not through your own effort, but through multiplying others’ capability.

That’s it. Everything else is commentary.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Leadership at $1M looks nothing like leadership at $10M. What’s leadership for a startup CEO would be micromanagement for a scale-up CEO. What’s leadership in tech would be failure in manufacturing.

So when people ask “What is leadership?” they’re asking the wrong question.

The right question is: “What is leadership at my specific stage, in my specific context, for my specific goals?”

Let me show you what I mean.

Take the Leadership Type Assessment to understand your current leadership context before we dive deeper.

What Leadership Is NOT (The Myths Killing Your Company)

Before defining what leadership is, let’s destroy what it isn’t:

Myth 1: Leadership is About Being Liked

The Comfort Trap: I’ve watched “beloved” CEOs run companies into the ground because they couldn’t make hard decisions. Their eulogy: “Everyone loved working there until it went bankrupt.”

The Reality: Leadership is about being effective, not popular. Sometimes that means:

• Firing your friend
• Saying no to good ideas
• Pushing people beyond comfort
• Creating productive conflict
• Choosing growth over harmony

Real Example: Last month, a CEO in my mastermind had 95% employee satisfaction and 0% growth for two years. Another had 75% satisfaction and 100% growth. Guess which company attracted better talent?

Myth 2: Leadership is About Having Vision

The Vision Delusion: Every failed CEO I know had “vision.” They could paint beautiful futures while their companies died in the present.

The Reality: Vision without execution is hallucination. Leadership requires:

• Vision (10%)
• Strategy (20%)
• Execution (70%)

The Test: Can your team execute your vision without you? If not, you have a dream, not leadership.

Myth 3: Leadership is About Being the Smartest

The Intelligence Trap: The smartest person in the room rarely builds the biggest company. They built the smallest box.

The Reality: Leadership is about making others smarter, not proving you’re smartest.

Myth 4: Leadership is About Working Hardest

The Effort Delusion: “Nobody outworks me” is the battle cry of CEOs who plateau at $5M.

The Reality: Leadership is about leverage, not effort.

• Working 80 hours = Management
• Getting 800 hours of output from 40 hours = Leadership

Myth 5: Leadership is Innate

The Born Leader Myth: “Natural born leader” is something people say when they don’t understand what created success.

The Reality: Leadership is observable, learnable, measurable, and developable. I’ve seen introverts become better leaders than extroverts, engineers better than salespeople, immigrants better than natives.

What matters isn’t who you are. It’s what you do.

The Real Definition: Leadership as Multiplication

After studying hundreds of CEOs, here’s my practical definition:

Leadership is creating exponential outcomes through others, not linear outcomes through yourself.

Let me break this down:

The Multiplication Matrix

The Math:

• Manager with 10 people: 1 + 10 = 11 units of output
• Leader with 10 people: 1 × 10 = 10-100 units of output

One adds. One multiplies. That’s the difference.

The Observable Behaviors of Real Leadership

You can’t measure “charisma” or “vision.” You can measure these:

Daily Behaviors:

Weekly Patterns:

What is Leadership at Different Revenue Stages?

This is where everyone gets it wrong. Leadership isn’t fixed. It evolves.

$0-1M: Leadership as Demonstration

What Leadership Is Here:

• Showing it’s possible
• Setting initial standards
• Creating belief from nothing
• Doing with intensity others copy

What It Looks Like:

• First to arrive, last to leave
• Closing every deal personally
• Solving every problem yourself
• Being the culture

The Paradox: At this stage, leadership looks like doing everything yourself. That’s OK. You’re demonstrating what excellence looks like.

Success Metric: Can you create $1M from $0?

$1-5M: Leadership as Elevation

What Leadership Is Here:

• Raising others’ capabilities
• Creating the first systems
• Building the initial team
• Shifting from doing to directing

What It Looks Like:

• Teaching while doing
• Creating playbooks
• Hiring people better than you
• Letting others fail safely

The Transition: Stop being the best at everything. Start making others better.

Success Metric: Can others do what only you could do?

$5-10M: Leadership as Architecture

What Leadership Is Here:

• Designing organizations
• Building culture deliberately
• Creating leaders, not followers
• Thinking in systems, not tasks

What It Looks Like:

• Never touching individual work
• Speaking in vision and values
• Building other leaders
• Creating frameworks

The Challenge: Everything that got you here now holds you back.

Success Metric: Does it work without you?

$10-25M: Leadership as Environment

What Leadership Is Here:

• Creating conditions for success
• Shaping beliefs and behaviors
• Building sustainable advantages
• Enabling others’ leadership

What It Looks Like:

• Invisible but everywhere
• Influence without involvement
• Culture as strategy
• Leaders creating leaders

The Evolution: You’re no longer leading people. You’re leading leaders.

Success Metric: Are leaders emerging without you developing them?

$25M+: Leadership as Legacy

What Leadership Is Here:

• Building institutional strength
• Creating category leadership
• Developing market influence
• Planning succession

What It Looks Like:

• Thinking in decades
• Building for after you
• Creating movements
• Influencing industries

The Ultimate Test: Would it thrive if you disappeared tomorrow?

Success Metric: Have you built something that doesn’t need you?

Discover which stage you’re in and what leadership means for you specifically.

The Five Universal Components of Leadership

Regardless of stage, all leadership contains these elements:

Component 1: Direction Setting

What It Is: Creating clarity about where you’re going and why it matters.

What It’s NOT:

• Vague mission statements
• Feel-good vision boards
• Copying competitors
• Following trends

How to Measure It:

The Daily Practice: Every decision should answer: “Does this move us toward our direction?”

Component 2: Capability Building

What It Is: Making others more capable tomorrow than today.

The Compound Effect:

How Leaders Build Capability:

• Assign stretch projects
• Provide real feedback
• Create learning environments
• Celebrate intelligent failures
• Invest in development

The Test: Are your people better because of you or in spite of you?

Component 3: Resource Multiplication

What It Is: Creating more from less through leverage and creativity.

The Multiplication Methods:

Real Example: Two CEOs, same industry, same starting point:

• CEO A: Needed $5M funding to reach $10M revenue
• CEO B: Reached $10M revenue, generated $5M cash

One managed resources. One multiplied them.

Component 4: Culture Architecture

What It Is: Creating an environment where the right behaviors happen automatically.

Culture is Leadership Scalability:

The Architecture Elements:

• Values that guide decisions
• Rituals that reinforce behavior
• Stories that shape beliefs
• Systems that enable success
• Language that creates reality

The Measure: Can a new employee understand and exhibit your culture within 30 days?

Component 5: Future Creation

What It Is: Building tomorrow’s advantages while managing today’s business.

The Time Allocation Reality:

How Leaders Create Futures:

• Start movements, not just companies
• Build categories, not just products
• Develop leaders, not just workers
• Create systems, not just solutions
• Shape markets, not just serve them

“Understanding these five components changed everything. I went from managing a $6M business to leading a $30M organization.” – Sandra Chen, CEO of ModernTech

The Practical Leadership Test

Forget personality assessments. Here’s how to measure real leadership:

The 30-Day Vacation Test

The Experiment: Leave for 30 days. No contact. No check-ins. No emergency calls.

What Happens:

Most CEOs can’t leave for 30 hours, let alone 30 days.

The Decision Velocity Test

Track for One Week:

• How many decisions require you?
• How many should require you?
• How fast are decisions made?
• How good are others’ decisions?

The Scoring:

The Talent Magnetism Test

The Questions:

• Are A-players joining or leaving?
• Do people take pay cuts to work with you?
• Are competitors poaching your people?
• Do former employees refer others?

The Reality: Leadership quality directly correlates with talent quality.

The Innovation Index Test

Count Monthly:

• Ideas generated by others
• Experiments launched
• Failures celebrated
• Improvements implemented

The Benchmark:

The Growth Multiple Test

The Simple Math:

• Your effort input
• Company output
• The multiple between them

If you work 2x harder for 2x results, that’s not leadership. That’s just effort.

Leadership means 1x effort creating 10x+ results.

What Leadership Looks Like in Practice

Let me show you real examples from my mastermind:

Example 1: The Technical Founder

Before Understanding Leadership:

• Reviewed every line of code
• Made every technical decision
• Worked 80 hours/week
• Company stuck at $3M

After Understanding Leadership:

• Built technical leaders
• Created architecture principles
• Worked 40 hours/week
• Company grew to $18M

What Changed: Stopped being the best engineer. Started building great engineers.

Example 2: The Sales CEO

Before Understanding Leadership:

• Closed every major deal
• Knew every customer personally
• Revenue dependent on his relationships
• Plateau at $8M

After Understanding Leadership:

• Built sales systems
• Developed sales leaders
• Created scalable processes
• Grew to $35M

What Changed: Stopped being the rainmaker. Started building rain systems.

Example 3: The Visionary Leader

Before Understanding Leadership:

• 100 ideas, 0 execution
• Team confused and exhausted
• Pivots every quarter
• Stuck at $2M

After Understanding Leadership:

• 3 ideas, brilliant execution
• Team aligned and energized
• Consistent direction
• Scaled to $20M

What Changed: Stopped confusing activity with leadership.

The Leadership Evolution Framework

Leadership isn’t static. It must evolve or die.

The Evolution Triggers

Miss an evolution point and you plateau. It’s that simple.

The Evolution Process

Phase 1: Recognition (Month 1)

• Admit current approach isn’t working
• Identify what new leadership looks like
• Calculate cost of not changing

Phase 2: Transition (Month 2-3)

• Start new behaviors
• Stop old behaviors
• Expect temporary performance dip

Phase 3: Integration (Month 4-6)

• New behaviors become automatic
• Results become visible
• Team adapts to new you

Phase 4: Acceleration (Month 7+)

• Compound effects kick in
• Growth accelerates
• Next evolution appears

Assess where you are in your evolution to plan your next transition.

The Difference Between Leadership and Management

This confusion kills companies. Let me make it crystal clear:

The Fundamental Difference

The Critical Insight: You need both, but at different ratios depending on stage.

The Stage-Based Balance

Get this balance wrong and you either have chaos (too much leadership) or stagnation (too much management).

Learn more: Leadership vs Management: The $5M Transition Point

What Leadership Is in Different Industries

Leadership principles are universal. Applications are specific.

Tech/SaaS Leadership

What It Is:

• Building innovation velocity
• Creating technical excellence
• Scaling at venture speed
• Disrupting markets

Unique Requirements:

• Technical credibility
• Rapid iteration mindset
• Data-driven decisions
• Category creation

Success Metrics:

• Growth rate >100% annually
• Product velocity
• Developer productivity
• Market disruption

Service Business Leadership

What It Is:

• Building human excellence
• Creating consistent quality
• Scaling through people
• Delivering transformations

Unique Requirements:

• Emotional intelligence
• Quality obsession
• Relationship mastery
• Trust building

Success Metrics:

• Client retention >90%
• NPS scores >70
• Referral rates >50%
• Margin expansion

Manufacturing Leadership

What It Is:

• Building operational excellence
• Creating safety culture
• Scaling through systems
• Delivering reliability

Unique Requirements:

• Process discipline
• Risk management
• Quality control
• Efficiency optimization

Success Metrics:

• Zero safety incidents
• 99.9% quality rates
• Efficiency improvements
• Cost reductions

The Dark Side of Leadership

Let’s be honest about what leadership really requires:

The Prices You Pay

The Truth: Leadership isn’t free. Know the price before you pay it.

The Loneliness Reality

Leadership is lonely because:

• You can’t be friends with everyone
• Some decisions have no good options
• The buck stops with you
• Few understand your challenges
• Success isolates as much as failure

The Solution: CEO peer groups and masterminds provide connection with others who understand.

The Responsibility Weight

When you truly lead:

• Families depend on your decisions
• Mistakes affect hundreds
• Success is shared, failure is yours
• There’s no off switch
• The pressure never stops

The Question: Are you willing to carry this weight?

How to Develop Real Leadership

Knowing what leadership is doesn’t make you a leader. Here’s how to develop it:

The 90-Day Leadership Development Sprint

Days 1-30: Foundation

• Define what leadership means for your stage
• Assess current leadership gaps
• Pick one area to develop
• Start daily practice

Days 31-60: Application

• Apply new leadership behaviors
• Measure results weekly
• Adjust based on feedback
• Push through discomfort

Days 61-90: Integration

• Make new behaviors automatic
• Teach others what you’ve learned
• Identify next development area
• Plan continued growth

Use the 90-Day Leadership Development Plan for detailed guidance.

The Daily Leadership Practices

Morning Question: “What can I create through others today?” Afternoon Question: “What am I doing that someone else should?” Evening Question: “Did I build capability or dependency?”

The Weekly Leadership Rituals

The Monthly Leadership Review

Ask yourself:

1. Did I create more leaders?
2. Did I build lasting systems?
3. Did I multiply or add?
4. Did I work on the business or in it?
5. Would it work without me?

Score each 1-10. Below 7 on any? That’s your focus next month.

The Final Answer: What Is Leadership?

After all this, here’s the simplest definition:

Leadership is making others successful.

Not you. Others.

When you make others successful:

• They build the company
• They solve the problems
• They create the innovations
• They drive the growth
• They become leaders

And paradoxically, when you make others successful, you become more successful than you could ever be alone.

The Ultimate Test: Count how many people are more successful because of your leadership. That number is your true leadership score.

“This definition changed how I see my role. I stopped trying to be successful and started making others successful. Revenue went from $7M to $28M in two years.” – Michael Park, CEO of GrowthSystems

Your Leadership Action Plan

Stop philosophizing about leadership. Start practicing it.

Today:

1. Define what leadership means at your specific stage
2. Identify one way you’re managing instead of leading
3. Make one decision that builds others’ capability
4. Take the Leadership Assessment

This Week:

• Monday: Stop doing three things others could do
• Tuesday: Develop one person’s capability
• Wednesday: Build one system
• Thursday: Reinforce one cultural value
• Friday: Plan one future advantage

This Month:

• Week 1: Assess your leadership gaps
• Week 2: Pick one area to develop
• Week 3: Practice new behaviors daily
• Week 4: Measure results and adjust

This Year:

• Quarter 1: Master your current stage leadership
• Quarter 2: Prepare for the next stage
• Quarter 3: Make the transition
• Quarter 4: Accelerate and compound

The Choice Before You

Now you know what leadership is. The question is: Will you do it?

Most won’t. They’ll keep:

• Doing instead of building
• Adding instead of multiplying
• Managing instead of leading
• Working harder instead of smarter
• Building dependency instead of capability

But some will choose differently. They’ll choose to:

• Build others’ success
• Create through multiplication
• Work on tomorrow while managing today
• Develop leaders, not followers
• Build something that lasts

Which will you choose?

Your company is waiting for your answer.

About the Author

Andreas Petterson is a former CEO who scaled a technology company from 0 to 150 employees as Canon’s youngest standalone CEO. He now helps 200+ CEOs understand and practice real leadership through Leaders ADAPT masterminds and advisory.

Related Resources

Assessment Tools:

• Leadership Type Assessment
• Leadership Style Assessment
• Leadership Skills Assessment

Further Reading:

• Leadership vs Management Differences
• Leadership Development Plan
• The Cost of Weak Leadership

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