Claim your own leadership - and light the way for others to claim theirs.
"Sheer survival in tomorrow's business environment demands extraordinary leadership abilities today!"
Are you sitting at your desk scanning this article with your head going ‘Oh no, not another article on Leadership!'. Do you feel as if you have seen and heard more than enough on the topic in recent history?
You're not alone.
Unfortunately it's become almost as overdone a cliché as ‘excellence' was a few years ago. To our great misfortune.
I sat in a conference briefing a while back, and heard the comment: ‘Oh no, not excellence again, we did that last year'. If it hadn't been so sad, it would have been funny. Now we are in danger of creating the same response around leadership.
Wouldn't that be a tragedy? A world blasé and cliché'd around something as vital as developing leadership!
Do you in fact see yourself as a leader at all? Do others? Of course leadership is much more than a nominated position - the prerogative of the anointed ones! Leadership is a chosen state for any individual in any role who wants to excel - and in so doing, to guide and inspire others.
In fact, genuine leadership cannot be conferred or appointed. It is a combination of learned skills and fostered qualities and attitudes, which creates an aura of respect and authority, of charisma and character, in such a way that others want to follow.
Is it really learned? Or are some people actually born leaders? The debate rages on.
From my studies, research and practical experience, it seems to me that rather than a genetic tendency to leadership itself, some children are born into environments that encourage and support the qualities, attitude and characteristics of leaders. Others, in their home and school environments, are suppressed. So the internal concept and ownership of the role of leader is either learned and developed, or quelled.
Which type of family were you in? It can be a cultural factor, and even a generational one. There's no doubt that today's young people have far greater permission to challenge, to envision change and to break rules in search of new ones.
It's a prime environment for growth. To create a leading organisation, there first needs to be a team of ‘leading' people. Of leaders.
The skills, qualities and attributes of leadership can be learned. They are most easily learned in childhood; there is no question. But how many of you know that you're still a child at heart - still willing and able to learn and grow in new and undreamed-of ways? (That's one of the qualities of a leader!). And so the learning and the growing can begin, or continue, at any age and stage of one's life.
Flying geese have a lesson to share with us. When geese fly together in formation, they fly 71% faster than any single goose is able to fly alone. The team effort creates an impetus greater than any one participant can develop. It's called synergy.
And more importantly, there is no one permanent lead goose. Each team member is willing and able to take the lead when called upon; each is ready to move up front when, from time to time, the front flyer takes a break. Think about it. Is every member of your team equipped with leadership skills?
My preferred personal model of leadership is one where ‘Positional' leadership (the appointment or election to a position of authority) is only an outer rim. Real leadership happens in the inner circle of ‘Circumstantial' leadership, where someone, anyone, anywhere is willing to put their hand up in a given circumstance and take the lead.
My definition of leadership is the ability and the willingness to imagine, inspire, influence and implement positive change. And in order to be able to do that, we need the innermost circle of ‘Personal' leadership operating within us, the calm quiet knowledge of our own inner power with its capability for vision, for action and for continual self-development.
The first task of a leader, I was told once, is to develop leadership in others. I believe we are all capable of it in those times and circumstances where our gifts can shine. Are you helping everyone in your team to polish theirs, so they can shine?
One of life's greatest rules is that you can not hold a torch to light another's path without brightening your own.