[/caption]
Leadership is action, not position. – Donald H. McGannon
Nuts and bolts time. As a leader how do your demonstrate your leadership? Are you doing anything to position yourself as something other than a leader?
There are probably hundreds of tasks and activities which you can do during any given day. The items with which you choose to interact with people, and how you choose to interact with people, will play a big part in your ability to lead them.
People want to see their leaders provide vision, direction, and take them to a better place. Unfortunately it is not uncommon for leaders to lose sight of this and sacrifice their leadership while managing. It should not have to be sacrifice, and should a situation arise where only leadership or management could survive, I would choose leadership.
The reality is that people position their leaders based on the activities they perceive them to be performing. If you truly wish to lead, this sometimes means taking charge of a situation, in other circumstances it may be more important to step away.
- The leader who chooses to sit in every status meeting and directing people at all levels of the organization is positioning themselves as the manager of the group (and not necessarily an effective one), not its leader.
- The leader who chooses to comment on the spelling and grammar of the documents instead of the value of the content is positioning themselves as the organizations chief clerical officer, not the leader.
- The leader who chooses to withhold information is not positioning themselves as a leader (in areas they may wish to lead) and people will look to others to provide leadership in these areas.
- People in organizations which are floundering in some way (everyone will know it is floundering) and see people with senior level titles spend time on comparatively trivial tasks will quickly drop the people with these titles as leaders.
What you as leader choose to spend your time on makes a difference, not only to you, but to all those you lead. The level of interaction you have with those you lead makes a difference, especially to those you lead. Seth Godin’s latest book “Tribes” describes how every one is a leader. The social technologies of today have become mainstream. With these technologies the ability of anyone to lead large groups of people is at hand. The title a person carries does not correlate to their leadership. If you want to lead, then you can and should lead. If you have a senior title and need to lead, then it is critical to demonstrate this leadership, if you do not, there are many people who will fill the void.
Choose how you demonstrate your leadership well. It one of the things you can control.
Yes you may. Please provide attribution and a link back to this post. Thank you for asking.