Leader impact

Having leadership doesn’t make you a leader; however, leaders need to have leadership.

Leadership, as defined by the GLOBE study, is “one’s capacity to influence and motivate others to contribute to the success of the organisation they are part of”

The others may be friends, family, colleagues or team members and the organisation could be informal, charitable or formal.

We are all faced with a multitude of situations that need leadership; influencing a group of friends on the mountainside to get a move on before the storm arrives, influencing a group of colleagues to get back to work to meet a milestone, influencing members of a meeting to stay focussed on the decision in hand, etc.

Whatever the situation you need to be willing to incarnate your leadership, you need to be aware of how you are being perceived and you need to be able to influence – it will probably also take a certain amount of your energy.

Using your leadership capacity is never easy; it means that something that should be happening, isn’t – if everything was hunky dory there would be no need for leadership.

We all have a certain leadership capacity and some of us are more willing to take on challenges, some of us are more aware of our behaviours and some of us are more effective at influencing; however, this, in my opinion, doesn’t make us a leader – even if people have been influenced by our actions and the “organisation” has been “successful”.

The key, at least for me, to being a leader, is to have a vision. It doesn’t have to be an “I have a dream” vision, but it is more than taking on a challenging situation – and I am not saying that taking on a challenging situation is easy.

A leader is someone who has a (preferably compelling) vision to strive for, is able to federate individuals (often with conflicting opinions) around the vision, is able to develop with the team a “strategy” for achieving the vision and is able to drive, collectively, the transformational journey.

In order to do the above, a leader needs leadership; they will need to be aware of their impact, able to influence, etc.

Someone with no, or very little, leadership capacity promoted (or even elected) into a leader position is almost doomed to failure. Unawareness of behavioural impact can lead to alienation, inability to influence can lead to imposition and lack of energy can lead to stress & burnout.

I have been helping future, first-time and experienced leaders to discover, develop and deploy their full leadership potential for over 35 years now; if you think I could help you, your team or your organisation do not hesitate to contact me: boblarcher@boblarcher.com