For the second instalment of this short series on leadership, I am going to discuss what it takes to be a leader. In my last post I did talk briefly about three qualities of leadership, integrity, learning, and passion. So, let’s expand on these.
Integrity comes from the Latin ‘integer’, meaning whole or complete. This root also gives us the word integration, which is about connection, unification, the process of moving towards wholeness. The essence of this in a leadership sense is, walking your own talk and honouring your commitments to others. It’s about being the same person at work as you are when not at work. In the words of CS Lewis, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” And it’s about the idea of connecting to a higher purpose. Then through the articulation of your vision and your actions you draw others with you on a shared endeavour. This higher purpose can be about the organisation you are leading or even something beyond that. It certainly is not the glorification of you as the leader. We’ve had and are still having too much of that sort of leadership these days. Character and ethics are related to the idea of integrity. Whole philosophy courses are taught about ethics, so a pithy summation here isn’t easy. From an NLP perspective ethics is closely associated with values. These are things which are important to us, they are arranged in hierarchies, and we have them in all areas of our lives. Though we can share some values, none of us will have exactly the same values arranged in exactly the same way. This means we are unlikely to agree about what is ethical. I think about it this way, good and bad are just words, but they describe energy that has different qualities. What we call good energy connects, integrates, and expands. Whereas bad energy subdivides, separates, and contracts.
As I have said before leadership isn’t something that you can easily teach. You can teach skills associated with it, but the intangible qualities of leadership need to be perfected on the job. This means that being a leader entails a lifelong dedication to learning and growth. Leaders need to be prepared to take risks and make mistakes, so long as they are learning from the experience of doing so. All decisions, in any aspect of life, are made with incomplete information. By all means gather data to help inform decision making, but remember the failure to make a decision is still a decision, most likely not a very good one. Learning includes the idea of facing criticism and contrary views, even within your organisation. Surrounding oneself with yes men and women teaches you nothing, and will only lead to eventual disaster. This sense of a growth mindset that a leader has is something they extend to their organisation. It becomes a learning and evolving growth mindset system.
Passion is the driving engine of human nature, even if you aren’t a leader. The things we feel passionate about motivate us to take action in life. When you listen to someone who is passionate about what they do or what they want to do, you can feel it in the way they talk. This sense of passion is contagious and can inspire others around you too. If you aren’t passionate about who you are leading or where you are leading them, it will be tougher for you to go the hard yards that your leadership journey may well demand of you. Passion, especially when harnessed to a higher purpose is an irresistible self-sustaining motivational machine. It creates the power behind the stick-at-it-ability that leaders need.
Other leadership qualities to reflect on are –
- A broad range of knowledge, within your specialisation and outside of it.
- A belief in people and teamwork.
- Empathy.
- A focus on the long term, rather than on short term gains.
- The ability to form and then articulate a vision.
- Innovation, leaders take people on exciting new journeys not predictable well-worn track ways.
- Communication skills, which includes, presenting, inspiring others, listening, questioning, storytelling, coaching, and reframing. All of which NLP teaches.
As you can see, there is a lot expected of a leader. Whatever your leadership role is don’t feel like you need to do all these things at once. You may be good in some areas and not so good in others. A key thing to remember about being a leader is that you grow into the role. The direction of that growth is to become more of who you are. Nourish the nascent leader in you and you will surprise yourself about the person you ultimately become in the process.
“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Warren Bennis
