During the past week, I have spent some serious reading time in the area of leadership style and development. Normally my selections are from a number of sources from throughout America. Whether they are classic or modernistic in nature, they are basically America thoughts.
My current read is from a researcher based in the United Kingdom. It is extremely interesting to see our leadership thoughts examined from a completely different perspective. A great deal of what we consider to be the Holy Grail of leadership apparently does not play well in other parts of the world.
Perhaps the most interesting aspects of the text, In Search of Leaders by Hilarie Owen comes from her listing of what she chooses to call here seven key essences of leadership. Some are things you may have seen or heard before, others present us with a new view of the leadership world. They are as follows:
- Leadership is distinctly different to management and is not just something to be added on to the job of a manager.
- Everyone is born with some gift of leadership, be it great or small. It is part of the human spirit and should be expressed in the world.
- Leadership is not the latest "fad."
- Leadership starts with the individual and requires a journey of becoming your true self.
- Leadership requires us to understand and listen to what is emerging in the world.
- Leadership is expressed by everyone when people are connected and part of the whole.
- Leadership is about being followers as well as leaders. (Owen, p.51-52)
Ed. - Hilarie Owen (Cheltenham, UK) is a consultant at Hilarie Owen Associates. She recently set up the Institute of Leadership, a nonprofit organization that develops leadership skills. Hilarie is also a frequent speaker and the bestselling author of Creating Top Flight Teams.
I have always thought that leaders and managers were different kinds of people. Would you rather follow a combat infantryman into battle, or an accountant? Would you rather attack a burning building fire with a fire vehicle mechanic, or a trained engine company? These are simple, but easily understood examples.
Those people who have traveled toward the managerial world have usually become enamored of things. They are not worried about individual people rather they are hung up on dollars and things. To a manager a person is a thing, just like a tire, an axe, or a fire department pumper. Each has an expense and each is thought of in terms of cost.
Leaders, real leaders, think of people as people. Each person who worked with me over the years had an intrinsic value. Each of the people with whom I labored, had an individual life, family, and value as that unique person I knew them to be. I worked to support them and nurture them. What I was to the organization, I was, as a result of those people and their labors. We were inextricably tied together.
Many of my greatest conflicts in the fire service have been with the bean counters of the world. They urged us to do more with less, not understanding that they had not given us enough in the first place. I guess this is the reason that I am so hung up on the manager versus leader analogy. I have seen the damage that such people can do.
As leaders we are asked to empower our people. We want them to experience some form of buy-in with all that we are asking them to do. Owen (2000) speaks to this when she tells us that there is a little bit of the leader born into each of us. Have you ever been in a situation where someone you know simply stepped up to the plate during a serious emergency and performed in a way that you might never have expected? That person was showing some of the leader within that they had born with.
Why don't we see this type of action more often? I would suggest that we do not see this because of the way in which our organizations are designed to beat people into line with the rules, rather than empower them to transcend the rules and excel as an individual.
It would seem that we have created operating guidelines for just about every aspect of our lives. While I realize the value of standard procedures, I also worry that requiring our people to act in lock-step with the rules can create people who can operate only when things are happening as they are supposed to, based upon the SOP's. We need to place the necessary love for knowledge within the heads of our people that will allow them to tap into that potential they possess.
How long have people been studying leadership? Trust me gang, this is not purely a product of the 19th, 20th or 21st Centuries. Owen (2000) tells us that leadership has existed, "
