Leadership

Ways of behaving that inspire people to commit to a challenging, but achievable vision.

Opinions vary as to what a leader really is. It is helpful to think of a leader more as a role with characteristic ways of behaving than as a particular person. Usually, organisations and groups have designated leaders. But even then it doesn’t necessarily follow that the official leader will behave as such. If you examine the way people are behaving you may discover that someone else is acting as unofficial leader. Often the role is shared, different people at different times doing the leading.

An effective leader is concerned both with the task in hand (the ‘what’) and with the decision-making processes (the ‘how’). It is the role of a leader to:

• create the rules for others to follow
• take risks and make ‘exposed’ decisions that go outside existing or accepted constraints
• wrestle with ambiguity and uncertainty (rule-making is always a messier, more uncertain process than rule-following)
• enthusiastically communicate a vision to people (vision is seeing the cathedral while you’re mixing the cement)
• bounce back when things go wrong and find new pathways, blaze new trails.

A leader can only achieve results through other people and in doing so needs to draw on a range of different styles such as Directive, Consultative, Collaborative, and Delegation. The acid test of good leaders is the extent to which they select a style to suit the circumstances.