Oh man, now there’s a title for you. Sure, I’m going to define the topic of leadership right here and now for you all. You best move on to smarter places like here, here or here if that’s your expectation.

I’ve been in a few common positions in relation to leadership, possibly in chronological order:

• Bottom of the food chain wishing someone would bestow a leadership role on me.
• A ‘manager’ supposedly leading teams.
• An ‘owner’ working to build leaders within teams.

Those experiences have given me some entry level insight into what leadership is all about. So what do I know today about leadership? Here’s my completely made up on the spot list:

1. Assigning, or being assigned, leadership almost never works.
2. Leadership isn’t a role or title.
3. Good leaders are natural leaders.
4. Natural leaders don’t wrestle, hoard, or covet leadership roles. They see voids in leadership and naturally gravitate towards them.
5. People won’t become leaders until they’re ready, which is different than crap like leaders are born, etc. Tomorrow’s leader is today’s plain old team member.
6. Good leaders are most excited about seeing plain old team members become tomorrow’s leaders.
7. Leadership isn’t a destination.
8. Leading is NEVER about making big decisions.
9. In fact, good leaders make as little big decisions as possible.
10. Natural leaders work themselves out of their roles. They see themselves as training wheels to help teams move forward until they’re no longer needed.
11. Good leaders allow acceptable voids in leadership.

So good leaders gravitate towards voids in leadership naturally, when they’re comfortable. As a leader, the ideal way to find leaders is to allow this natural progression by opening up tolerable voids in leadership within your teams. This is in contrast to creating roles and assigning them. Have I created roles and assigned them on teams? Yep and I will again, however, I view those occasions as failings on my part. Have I been on every side of every fence I describe above? Pretty much.

If you’re a plain old team member who wants to become tomorrow’s leader then my advice is to watch closely for those voids in leadership on your team. Don’t clutch and grab at them. Identify them and work with your entire team to help them move forward on those issues. When you see these voids, the worst you can do is sit back, bitch and moan about the terrible job you’re current managers are doing.

If you’re a leader trying to grow your next crop of leaders. Strive not to assign leadership roles. Think about these voids and try opening some up on your teams and see who naturally steps in. When you see someone stepping in then do everything you can to support, encourage, and make them successful. Oh, and grow a thick skin and be prepared that some people may see these voids as failings on your part.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Office Gossip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.