Development in
leadership:
developing the whole leader
You may be supporting development in leadership expertise of
others. You may recognize a need for more creative, talented and
effective leadership strategies. Perhaps you are reflecting on your own
approach to leadership.
We looked at some pitfalls in the development
of leadership in our previous article. Here we sketch a
framework for development in leadership qualities.
It makes sense to look at how excellent
practitioners grow and develop, whatever their specific area of work.
The
term “development in leadership” implies a process. Excellent leaders
aren’t necessarily born. Excellent leadership approaches can be learned
and enhanced.
Warren Bennis says:
"The most dangerous
leadership myth is that leaders are born-that there is a genetic factor
to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain
charismatic qualities or not.
"That's nonsense. In fact, the opposite
is true.
"Leaders are made rather than
born."
There are other points of view, of course. Stephen Covey proposes
that great leaders are faithful to an in-built compass of principles. Another - unrelated - Covey ... Gregory, advances the same view in an article with links to a
number of leadership stories. For us, it is difficult to see
whether any of these stories 'prove' once-and-for-all that leadership
development is something some are naturally born with, or something we can be taught.
But we do believe you'll explore your own beliefs about leadership if you
ask yourself: "What are the lessons here for me?" as you read Gregory
Covey's leadership stories.
For
the moment we are not considering specific industry, or role-related
technical skills. We’re focusing on what are frequently called soft
skills. Soft … but hard to practice well!
Development in leadership: three qualities of an
excellent leader
- Sensitivity:
- awareness of the many factors that play on a
given leadership scenario. For example ...
- your own strengths and weaknesses
- mental and emotional states of key players
and stakeholders
- your own mental/emotional state and physical
sensations
- interactions between team members
- factors arising from organizational culture
... as a basis for building rapport and
communicating clearly.
- Flexibility:
- the ability to make changes, to respond to the
changing cues that evolving situations provide. For example ...
- relating positively to a wide variety of
people appropriate to context
- behaving and communicating in a wide variety
of ‘registers’
- thinking imaginatively and creatively; not
being constrained by the status quo
- exploiting different opportunities to
motivate others
- responding effectively to a variety of
colleagues and their needs
- learning and applying new skills, techniques
and knowledge
- Integrity and authenticity:
- a well-defined personality that others
experience as positive, open, genuine and trustworthy. For example ...
- stability of thoughts, feelings, behaviors
and actions
- reliability of focus and concentration
- consistency of approach and fair mindedness
- ‘what you see is what you get’
- accepting challenge and debate openly and
respectfully
- avoidance of games and double standards
- providing an appropriate role model for
others
You may find the the ideas on this page reinforce or complement our
ideas about the development of leadership skills. Either way, a
look at somebody else's point of view at this point could help you
develop your own ideas.
- Meta skills:
- the ability to hold the above options in view
and make rational and skilled choices from the options available.
Development in leadership qualities: How?
Sensitivity, flexibility and integrity are three
essentially human qualities.
Couple them with an overarching ability to make
choices intelligently and we have a basis for wise leadership.
The
University of Life (and, more likely, The School of Hard Knocks) limit
us. We are conditioned to think and act in relatively narrow ways. Our
choices have been constrained.
This impacts on all the roles we
adopt in life ... and so on how we approach our role as a leader. We
bring a lifetime's limiting beliefs with us. These impact on our
freedom to choose how we act.
How do we open up fresh and
valuable choices once again? What does a programme of development in
leadership practice look like when viewed in these terms?
That is the focus of our next introductory page on development
coaching, which we are writing and will be available in a few days'
time. As ever, if you register for the RSS feed/Blog, we'll ping you
when it arrives on the site!
Our previous article set the scene for this one.
In it we looked at how some approaches actually limit the development of
leadership qualities. This
could all be summed up as developing an authentic leadership style.
'Authentic' and 'author' have the same root. How are you 'authoring'
yourself as a leader?
An authentic leader is experienced as
open, honest, accessible - very much "what you see is what you get."
These qualities are consistently ranked highly in studies of effective
leadership.
If ideas about the 'authentic leadership' interest you, you may be interested in this site about self-development goals that support the authentic self.
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