Leadership Is Personal, Again: The Truth That Can Speed Up Your Leadership Journey

Leadership Is Personal, Again: The Truth That Can Speed Up Your Leadership Journey

Two decades ago, I stepped into the multinational corporate world. I started off as an engineer with a relatively unassuming stance. The first sentence I heard from my manager was ‘You got to display strong leadership skills here.’ He gave me a long list of rules on what leadership was and what it wasn’t; what a leader should or should not do. There were certain undocumented but deeply ingrained expectations as to how I should come across as a leader; what words I should use; what approaches I should adopt; what image I should rely upon, and what communication styles I should adhere to. Everything was ‘type cast’ beforehand.

For several months, that unearthly ‘leadership expectations’ continued to haunt me. It appeared like a mystic skill. I felt that it was an elite skill which is possessed only by a few ‘gifted’ people. Honestly, I was intimidated to a point where I thought that this was not my cup of tea. I was on the verge of quitting that role.

As a global authority on speed, I value speed with which any skill can be developed. There was something that I felt was inhibiting my pace of acquiring leadership skills. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to interact with some of the best leaders across the planet while conducting my flagship research on employee development. I figured out that these leaders did not follow a ‘textbook’ philosophy on leadership. Rather, they have some unique perspectives which not only set them apart from business-as-usual leaders but truly accelerated their leadership journeys.

As I reflect on my own leadership journey, I can’t help but realise that how poorly the leadership skills were presented and taught to me during the early years of my leadership roles. As I write my reflections, I critically think about a few things.

Have we glamorised the leadership skills more than necessary?

Have we typecasted it as some sort of elite skill?

Have we made ordinary people think of leadership as something beyond or above them?

Are we teaching the right kind of leadership to our next generation? Or are we turning them into corporate leadership zombies?

Leadership is overrated

As I chartered the corporate ladder, I realised one bitter truth. The business world has taught many of us some misconceived notions of leadership as if it is all about doing extraordinary things, herding the teams towards a common goal, or showing new visions to people.

Several consultants and authors have invented new buzz words like fierce leadership, brave leadership, extreme leadership, situational leadership, self-leadership, and so on. Every single day I find a new prefix added to the word leadership in social media or in the title of a new book. Ironically, those only add to the confusion rather than educating people. The compounding effect of how the concept of leadership is treated by most business schools, organisations, authors, and consultants probably has created an over-glamorised version of leadership.

How many large organisations out there still continue to measure or rate their employees’ potential purely based on the perceived leadership qualities they display? I bet there are still many. The progression in one’s career is contingent on one’s conventional leadership qualities, in the literal sense. It has been unduly overemphasised as a core requirement by some organisations.

Unwittingly, leadership traits are presented to look larger than life itself. Leadership skills are now treated as if those are the elite skills that sit at the top of the pyramid of professional competence at the workplace. Unknowingly or knowingly, the businesses treat leadership as a penultimate title or milestone employees should or could reach for. That chase is an endless rat race.

I don’t disagree with the usefulness of leadership skills to the business and to society at large. It is crucial at every level in an organisation. Every single employee needs to be a leader in their own sense. My viewpoint is that leadership skills should be considered the base of the competence pyramid if one really has to construct one. That way, it could be seen as the most foundational skill, rather than presenting it as an apex skill. We have made the whole concept of leadership too intimidating for an ordinary person.

Lessons from centuries of history

Have you ever had someone telling you that you need to develop your leadership skills? At that moment, you probably felt just like me, as if leadership traits are possessed by a few gifted ones. Your immediate conclusion probably made you think you don’t have what it takes to be a leader. Or at least, you thought there was a long journey ahead of you to be there.

And then, you make a promise to invest in yourself and shine as an outstanding leader, no matter what it takes. Before you realise it, you get trapped in some leadership development programs, frameworks, and philosophies. You get brainwashed to adopt a ‘taught’ stance on leadership. You hardly have time to discover and identify your own leadership philosophies.

It is a sad truth that we have overlooked the demonstration of ‘true’ leadership that our ancestors showed us. If you study centuries of history, one thing that stands out is that there was something characteristically personal about leadership. It was not bound by any specific styles or rules. Let’s compare the traits of outstanding leaders in history and times across any ancient civilisation. One thing stands out as a common denominator. Great leaders were fluid and consistent in behaviours, irrespective of the situation. They stood for their values or what they believed in strongly. They stayed present and available to those they cared about. They were reliable in delivering what they promised. Above all, they did not seem to act out any leadership style, but it came out to them naturally.

Do we teach our students and employees to discover that natural and personal side of leadership inside themselves?

Through years of interactions with professionals from the lowest to the highest management hierarchy, I realised that the leadership programming in most organisations kills (or overshadows) the natural leader inside any individual.

Leadership is around us

Lately, social media is flooded with idealistic definitions of ‘leader’ and ‘leadership.’ I don’t think leadership can be contained in one typecast meaning or expectation because it is a contextual and situational phenomenon.

Let’s ponder for some situations for a moment.

What would you call your father who provides and supports your family through the tough times? Isn’t he a great leader?

What would you call your mother who showers you with unconditional care with no expectations? Isn’t she a great leader?

What would you call a teacher who teaches you to navigate through the ambiguities of life? Isn’t he or she a great leader?

What would you call a friend, guiding you on the right path in times of your indecisiveness? Isn’t he or she a great leader?

How often do we take a moment to pause and say, ‘That’s the leadership?’ Probably, not much.

Why not?

Because we have been made to think as if leadership is something that is found only outside the house. Through decades of indoctrination, it has been imprinted in our minds that only some front-runners of the society are qualified to be called leaders.

That’s an unfortunate misrepresentation. Before you define leadership, take a hard look at your family, friends, spouses, teachers, society and the people around you. You would see a different aspect of the concept of leadership. That’s the yardstick you can use to identify yourself as a leader.

Leadership is personal

Amidst that noise, you are likely to underrate or misread your own leadership traits. That’s why I see the most significant challenge to start off a leadership journey is our ‘learned’ or ‘adopted’ inability to perceive ourselves as a leader. That translates to our ‘incapability’ to identify our own leadership ‘capability.’ I believe, if you could start seeing leadership in the basic things of life, you would recognise your innate leadership traits without following any specific leadership philosophy or framework. Perhaps you would not need one.

To feel like a leader, you must begin to live in a ‘personal’ space. You need to train yourself to notice the leadership skills in your homes, families, and even in your friendship circles. It takes time to realise that leadership exists in every bit of our existence, in the way we interact and work with our surroundings and with ourselves. When you recognise remarkable leadership traits in the efforts of your father, mother, friends, teachers or spouses, or anyone around you, you will discover a characteristically intentional, dependable, and ‘always present’ leader inside you, too.

But I must admit, attaining that level of clarity itself is a behemoth challenge. To do so, first, I had to disconnect myself from all the ‘taught leadership’ expectations set on me to find that ‘person.’ Second, I had to discover what I value the most, cherish the most, respect the most, and care about the most.

You probably don’t need any training to become that ‘person.’

All you have to do is to see yourself from a personal lens and not a professional lens. I understood one thing: I already had the leadership inside me I was striving for externally. The moment I understood it, I viewed myself as a great leader. And it did not take too long for others to notice that too.

Starting by being personal

I firmly believe that an incredible leadership journey starts with two things – “Why” and “What for.” To develop myself into a leader, I needed to seek clarity about two things:

1) Clarity about the cause (why)

2) Clarity about the goal of the task, project, or the team I was leading (What for).

“Why” is the emotional and sensitive side of you driven by your emotions, feelings, passions, and inner voices.

“What for” is where you want to go, where you want to take people, your bigger purpose, or the final outcome you expect out of what you are doing.

The distance we travel between “why” and “what for” is the actual journey of leadership. Along that journey, when you stay true to yourself and the society, when you have the intention to do the right thing at the right time for the right cause, you become that influential leader you aspire to be. The leadership you attain so is undaunted, unshakable, and timeless. That leadership is not at the mercy of any leadership development programs.

However, what is right and what is not is very contextual. You need to recall the times when you asked this question–What is the right thing to do for your family? Get into the same frame of mind when you ask these ‘what for’ questions at the workplace –What is the one thing I should care about the most? What’s the right thing to do for my customers? What’s the right thing to do for my business? What’s the right thing to do for my employer? What’s the right thing for you to do for my staff? Then, ponder on the ‘why’ – the cause for which you want to do it. Should you do it for profit, promotion, happiness, or something that you genuinely care for?

Identify your personal philosophy

It is time to rethink what you mean by leadership and where you get your leadership inspiration from. When you recognize that leadership is personal, you would then identify your belief system, value system, philosophy, and core preferences in terms of how you interact with people in your personal life and how you value the hints of leadership in and around you.

No matter what, you need to be who you are because that’s what makes you stand out. The moment you come across as ‘that person,’ you are on the right path to becoming a top-notch leader. While doing so, we become being dependable, reliable, and an ‘always present’ leader who does the right things for the right cause at the right time. 

This article first appeared in AMBITIONS magazine available at this link: https://www.associationofmbas.com/leadership-is-personal-again-the-truth-that-can-speed-up-your-leadership-journey/

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