Leadership; can it be taught? Possibly, actually. Its like anything else, if you want it badly enough, you will put everything else to one side and pursue it until you find it, or are defeated.
What is it? At its most basic I suppose it is about implementing plans and motivating people. I’ve done that. When you own the business, it is easier than if you are a mere manager, doing someone else’s bidding. I have been in both situations in my life. When you are the business owner, you have to learn leadership fast because if you don’t, good people will depart or worse, leave and start up on their own taking your clients with them. When you are working for someone else and it is clear that they are calling the shots, it is harder I think. Staff will follow you and defer to you as long as they feel you are making the right judgements and decisions but the grass will always seem greener elsewhere to some people and you have to accept that.
Just let them go.
You can go on leadership courses and I have been on a few; it’s all very well of course trying to motivate a salesman who is a law unto him or herself but when you are confronted with the situation, you either forget the good advice you got on that course last March or find that your problem is rather different to the theoretical one you dealt with in class.
This mini-post was prompted by someone recently telling me about a leadership course she had attended where they all formed teams [been there?] and given a jigsaw puzzle to assemble. Without the picture.
She straightaway started looking for corners and edges but someone else on the team was a leader. This person turned the pieces over so you could only see the brown cardboard side . . . . no coloured pictures . . . and that transformed the task. It was still difficult but you were now putting together random pieces without the distraction of blue sky/blue sea/ blue smoke/ blue icebergs.
Teachable?
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