Leadership thoughts for 2008 (2)

Last week, we began to look at some leadership thoughts to start the year so as to give us a platform for our 2008 leadership journey. The idea is to provide us with some inspirational ideas designed not only to inspire us but also to provide illumination for our progress going forward. These ideas are set to give us principles by which we can build an effective growth drive for our leadership development. Today we take a look at a second leadership thought.

Leadership thought 2: You set your leadership direction by your definition. A look at literature will indicate the diverse and multiple meanings of leadership. Burt Nanus and Warren Bennis in their book, Leaders found over 350 definitions in literature. Often, while defining leadership we tend to refer to these definitions and pick the one most suitable. However, I have recently begun to realize that in most areas of personal development it is not so much the cerebral definitions we pick from literature as the ones we have paraphrased into our level of understanding, in other words, our personal definition of what we think leadership is.

Years ago, I found myself, while on campus, elected as editor of a campus magazine. In hierarchy, the editor was No 3 after the Editor in Chief and his deputy. I found myself defining my leadership role as a shaper of direction and this I followed with zeal becoming crucial in helping the magazine maintain a clear brand often over the preferred desire of the majority. This was because it became obvious that I had the kind of perceptiveness which enabled us to set clear cut responsive visions for the magazine. However, probably because of my performance, I was then elected Editor in Chief and instead of using the platform as one to further drive the organization to maximize the direction I found myself redefining my role as the consensus builder. The result was that the ideas which had been swept aside came back with a vengeance and the consensus arrived at soon led to a drop in marketability while the internal troops remained happy because their wishes were prevailing and they were largely unaware of the impact it was creating on the magazine itself.

The magazine did not die at once and in fact I was hailed as the inspirational leader of the organisation on graduation. Several years later, the magazine shut down and till today I am convinced that my definition of the meaning and role of leadership was a contributor. What that experience taught me was that we can limit ourselves by the way we define our role. Today, by and large, my definition of leadership has changed and this reflects significantly in the things I do. A study of most great leaders will show you that they came to a point where they defined what they considered their calling and thereby their definition of what leadership meant to them. It was Isabella Allende who said, “You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.”

There are several key matters arising from this issue of leadership definition. The first is that your definition of yourself as a leader automatically prescribes your perimeters of operation and effectiveness. One of my observations as I work with business and organisational leaders is the fact that a large majority of them have never really given themselves a definition of what leadership means to them and how they see themselves in their role as leaders. This is a major reason for the confused signals about who they are and what they want to achieve. As a result of the non clarity of their definition, many of them respond to leadership issues by instinct, a factor which is notoriously unstable and unpredictable.

A second issue is that while your leadership definition is critical it is not cast in stone and therefore can be revised as you grow and learn new things. It is better to start now with a clarification within ourselves of what our personal definitions of leadership are however seemingly incomplete it may be. Ultimately, a person with a clear but faulty definition of leadership will likely achieve and make more impact than a leader without clarity on this very important point.

A third related issue is that once we recognise the value of our definition we immediately realise that our leadership journey is largely influenced by our journey in definitions and a clear path to growth might be to spend this year examining our definitions of leadership reviewing them against the things we read, our experiences and our aspirations.

Finally, as we clarify our definition of leadership we provide ourselves with an opportunity to review with clarity our views. It was Socrates who said “An unexamined life is not worth living”. We find that when we clarify and probably write down things we are better equipped to scrutinize them and subject them to the test of our core values and what we really consider admirable. We then have the opportunity to also examine how well our definitions equip us to deal with the issues we face. The process of exploration and examination is indeed key to growth.

Remember, you set your leadership direction by your definition.