When we think about leadership we think of people and their amazing potential. ‘Potential’ because everyone has more in them than they currently bring to their work.
Whether it is in their energy, strength, drive, passion, belief, tenacity, resilience, doubt, curiosity, care, tenderness, generosity, capability, skills, talents, love, joy, happiness, pain, disappointment, sadness or whatever else … there is always more
Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading the System
Leadership is about creating a different outcome by tapping and liberating this latency in self and other. It is about interrupting the usual, the predictable, the norm and helping people find, develop and bring the best of themselves, to be the best that they can be in tackling whatever the situation.
Leading Self
There is no formula to Leadership, it is deeply personal. We each have our own way of bringing forth our Leadership that can be developed.
Leadership is an act, a moment that happens in which a decision needs to be made about how to react; what to do or say; and how to say or do ‘it’. It involves stepping out and taking the more challenging route, turning away from the learned, easy, common, comfortable, known or ‘safe’.
If you don’t feel anything, you’re probably not leading anyone.
The leader knows they are stepping into leadership when they feel it.
Heart thumps, mouth dries, temperature rises, breath shortens, tummy rumbles; however it’s experienced, it’s real!
It is these feelings that fuel doubt, hesitation, avoidance. When under pressure it is easy to rationalise unhelpfully; “why I shouldn’t/ can’t”; “it won’t work; they won’t listen.” Doubts arise and moments are ducked, in the knowledge that no-one will notice.
Leading Others
When anyone steps out authentically and with heart, they mobilise and are seen. Others react, oppose; support; ignore.
Stepping out with more skill is our endeavour. Helping people understand how to better use themselves to impact and mobilise more people, more powerfully, more purposefully is our goal.
Leading the System
We are systems creatures. We organise, building complex, inter-related systems that have their own tempo, dynamics, patterns, cultures and habits in which we each play our part.
We become inured to the systems around us, blind to how they act on us, how we respond and serve to re-enforce them.
Leading the system first means becoming sighted. Seeing the system, not the parts; the patterns not the processes; the dynamics, not the people.
Once sighted , we help people learn to notice and make choices to interrupt the existing systemic patterns, dynamics, to go against the grain and create change. (See Change Leadership)