Leadership - what's it for?

There are of course as many different "flavours" of leadership in business as there are leaders, though most leaders share many of the common traits of what good leadership looks and feels like. What I've found over the years is that too many leaders also share something else - a failure to ask themselves a very fundamental question about their leadership. This is rarely the leader's fault - too much leadership training focusses on the mechanics of leadership, human dynamics and how to "be a good leader".

No, being a leader in business requires something more. It starts with asking a very simple question (though of course as with most simple questions, the answer tends to be much more complex). For those leaders I've worked with who've started asking themselves this question, it's often re-ignited their love of their work and has been transformational for them. Steve Radcliffe articulates this very well in his excellent book "Leadership Plain and Simple" (thoroughly recommended, if you've not already read it).

The question all leaders in business should ask themselves is:

"What do I want to achieve through my leadership"?

Think about it. Being a leader means you have the opportunity to make things happen. Your leeway to do so may be limited or it may be expansive, so your first task is to find out how much freedom to act you have in your organisation. You might be surprised at just how much freedom you have.

Not many organisations pay leader-sized wages simply to have you purely deliver the corporate strategy as a clone of all the leaders who went before you or with whom you presently work - though that's often the effect of leadership training.

What the business really wants is your input - emphasis on "your". They really want to know your new ideas, how you want to do things differently, what you want to add. You see, with leadership training it's easy to become a clone who's just doing the leadership equivalent of "painting by numbers". The fun starts when you start to address that question of "what do I want to achieve...". You're leading your own part of the business, it's yours to craft, hone, embellish, polish.

Until you ask that key question, you'll never really be leading.........