We have all seen leadership at one time or another and we always seem to know it when we see it, but it doesn’t always look or feel the same. And that reality has always fascinated me. Leadership really is an amorphous thing. There are lots of different qualities that go into leadership and doubtless there are some threads that are weaved through every example of leadership, but if we could distill it down, what would the bare essence of leadership look like? This is a question with which I have long wrestled and which represents what my blog is intended to be all about … a discussion of leadership.
Through the years I have collected numerous quotes on leadership that have helped me to paste together somewhat of an overarching definition of leadership that at least works for me, but I don’t want to focus this blog on my collective sense of leadership. Instead, I want to share individual quotes in individual blogs that I hope will stimulate others to provide comment on. Perhaps, we can help each other to better understand just what leadership is all about.
And to begin this process, let me start with a quote from Bill Bradley, the famed basketball player and coach of some years ago. His sense of leadership was that it revolved around “unlocking people’s potential to become better.” Pure and simple, he viewed a leader as someone who could grow and mentor others to another level … coach or drill sergeant, teacher or boss, parent or peer … giving of one’s self to help someone else to evolve. I find this exceptionally cool … and not quite what I would have immediately gravitated to when describing a leader.
At first brush my early view of leaders was that these were strong, inspirational and decisive individuals that you would surely follow to the ends of the earth if need be. But Mr. Bradley is more focused on an ability to see inside of people and to understand how to get the most out of them … how to break down an individual into their time-clock pieces and to get those clock movements working perfectly … how to entice people into growing … how to “unlock their potential.”
For me, this describes a mentor. However, not every mentor is a leader … and perhaps even very few would qualify as such. So, where does the distinction lie? What makes the mentor, the grower of people, transcend into a leader? I have thought a great deal about this and it seems to me that this boils down to “influence.” And this is something that John C. Maxwell spoke to in his book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, specifically the Law of Influence, wherein he states that “The true measure of leadership is influence … nothing more, nothing less.”
Influencing people to grow, to accomplish their potential, or simply to follow one’s lead surely seems to be an important part of leadership, but I would not call this the foundation of leadership. There seems to me to be much more that colors this picture. For me, influence is a vehicle … a way in which to achieve intended results (or as Mr. Maxwell stated, a “measure”), but not the true essence of leadership.
Author Cross-references:
Bill Bradley: None
John C. Maxwell: See also blogs 6/5/09, 6/26/09, 11/20/09, 3/29/10
Key Word Cross-references:
Influence: Also see blog 2/25/09, 2/18/10, 3/29/10
Mentoring/Nurturing/Developing: Also see blogs 12/12/09, 1/13/09, 2/6/09, 2/28/09, 6/5/09, 7/7/09, 9/9/09, 9/15/09, 10/26/09, 12/5/09, 1/6/10, 3/29/10
Tags: Leadership
on Leadership ... by Steven Davis, CAE 
December 10, 2008 at 1:38 pm |
First off, congratulations on your new blog Steven! I know you have a lot to teach and I am eager to learn from your experience.
You ask some very good questions about leadership and I am still thinking things though. But to answer your basic question, a person can grow and influence people without being a leader… but I would say a true leader has to grow and influence others in order to be a leader. A person who does not somehow put others first and push them to be the best they can be isn’t a leader; that person is more of a “boss” or, in some cases, a “bully.”
I also think leaders can grow and influence others in a variety of ways (by example, by mentoring and by the content of their character just to name a few), but the key is, in the end, a true leader is one who serves those he or she leads.
December 10, 2008 at 3:57 pm |
Thank you, Caron, for your encouragement and for your reaction to the questions surfaced in my initial post. I look forward to continuing a leadership dialogue with you.
Re your first point, “a person who does not somehow put others first and push them to be the best they can be isn’t a leader,” I could not agree with you more. I have seen a number of individuals through the years who have all of the tools to be truly outstanding leaders, but they are more focused on themselves than on those around them … and never become effective leaders as a consequence. A leader needs to have followers, and if those supposed followers realize that their supposed leader is driven by ambition, their allegiance seems to diminish soon enough.
Tom Peters had an interesting statement that sums this up for me, “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” And this gets back to the whole mentoring concept … you can be a mentor and not a leader, but I feel strongly that to be an effective leader you have to possess and actively utilize mentoring skills. You have to be able to demonstrate to those whom you lead that you genuinely care about them and are willing to invest in them. It has been my experience that if you can do that … they will in turn invest in you and your vision. And, it is that kind of “partnership” between leaders and followers that yields the grandest results. And I think you summed this up very well in noting that “in the end, a true leader is one who serves those he or she leads.” Amen, sister!