Sep 14, 2011

[leading] Angles on leadership

I've started my own 'deep dive' into leadership development a while ago. As part of that, I went back to the basics: the definition and the various schools of thought around "leading".

On Wikipedia, leadership reads as:
“process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task"
In its essence, leadership is a social skill so it should come as no surprise the whole scala of human behavior and emotion is entangled within the concept. But more than that, the Wikipedia article strikes me as poor and confusing. I'm a fan of the online encyclopedia as I usually find to the point information there; but this article didn't live up to my expectations. The concept of 'leadership' however is an important one, with lots of research on it, a heavy impact on people, its share of self-proclaimed gurus and fashion of the day, etc. Because it is such an eye catching term that has no magic formula, there are many schools of thought and perceptions on leaders, leadership and leadership development. Maybe that is why the article is going in all kinds of directions.
The scary thing is that the common view on leadership is a very narrow one, stereotypical even, and by consequence not very popular. Leadership seems to have become synonymous for '1 superstar leader' who tells 'the followers' what they have to do -even what they have to think- and who get all the credit (and money). As Jay pointed out before: just look at what a simple Google Image Search on the word leadership gets you. There's no picture of people with long, interwined arms that point in the same direction or anything like that. And as the keynote speaker on last night's meet&greet pointed out: probably for too long we have only focused and put our money on the top level of the company. Ask a lot of employees what they think of 'leadership', and you'll get a variation on the following:


There is work to be done!

Anyway, Ralph pointed me to this overview series of schools of thought on leadership, and I created this 'overly simplistic overview of 10 leadership schools of thought' based on it. Enjoy.



PS
On the quantified self experiment I can be short for now: it is very insightful, and would be even more so if only I logged my learning with a little more discipline. My learning pattern seems to be around 30 min a day, with a few 'stronger' days a week where it goes up to several hours.

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