Eight Characters in Search of a Plot – the Capabilities that Underpin Great Leadership

Leadership. Setting challenging and worthwhile goals; inspiring others to follow and enabling them to realise your vision; making a long lasting and beneficial difference.
If you are reading this post the likelihood is that you are interested in those behaviours that underpin great leadership and are seeking to develop yourself and, perhaps, those around you. There is a wealth of material out there to help you and any number of training, coaching and advisory organisations who will come to your assistance (for a small consideration). But the commitment to develop leadership behaviours has to come from within the individual; yourself or those with whom you are working. So can you find a way to make sense of all of the available information and can you find a structured approach that will enable you to 'Keep It Simple Stupid' and focus on the elements that will work for you or your team? Yes you can. I did and it works for me – and may work for you. Welcome to the eight key leadership capabilities.

Nature or Nurture – The Case for Leadership Development

In my last full post I put forward my thoughts on what constitutes great leadership and was encouraged by the quantity and quality of the responses. Those responses have caused me to modify slightly my three criteria for great leadership although the essence of each remains:

1. Great leaders set challenging and worthy goals.
2. Great leaders inspire others to attempt those goals.
3. Great leaders provide the capability for others to realise those goals.

Now, I am interested in helping others to develop their leadership capabilities. Actually, I am interested developing myself and would like to make 'helping others to develop' what I do. Either way, I have a vested interest in leadership development. Yet it seems to me that there are two obvious questions that need to be addressed before we go further down the 'leadership development' path.

1. Can leadership capabilities be developed?
2. Should leadership capabilities be developed?

Shine On You Crazy Diamonds.

"Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!" - "Shine on you crazy diamond" by Pink Floyd

 "That Margaret Thatcher, eh? What's she all about?"

Fear not - this is not going to be a politically inspired post. The above statement is usually a trigger for those who know me to drink up and head for the nearest exit, indicating as it does that I am about to launch into what I fondly consider to be my brilliant impression of a stand up comedian. This is accompanied by me rolling up the sleeves of my jacket (if wearing one) and leaning on an imaginary mic stand. The impression generally comes in somewhere during the third pint and was inspired, as the more astute amongst you may have worked out by now, sometime in the mid 80's by the likes of Ben Elton and co. It has remained unchanged, frozen in time, and unaffected by the fine works of the Izzard's, Bailey's, Mitchell's and Webb's of this world ever since.

I mention this here, not because I am currently midway through my third pint, or because I am feeling particularly humorous but because it is a typically long winded way of mine to introduce the subject of this post which could be stated as:
"That [insert name of leader of your choice here], what's he/she all about?"

Or, to put it another way: "What do we mean by 'Leadership'?"

Do the right thing. Do it right.

"I kept on looking for a way to take me through the night. I couldn't get it right. I couldn't get it right." - Climax Blues Band


I've already got a stack of ideas lined up for the weekly in depth posts, so picking the right subject for this first post could have been a tricky problem. But when I sat back and thought about what was the one message I really wanted to get across that would sum up my approach to leadership and would get you coming back for more – (or have you heading for the hills never to return) – it became obvious what I should write about.
Over the next few weeks I intend to share my views on the nature of leadership; what I mean by leadership behaviours and whether they are intrinsic or can be developed; the importance of self awareness; the difficulties of delivering sustained change and what to do when you know change is needed but you are too busy to make it happen. But first I want to focus on the two underlying principles that kept me going (and kept me sane) through any number of complex and troublesome projects.

Welcome my friends to the blog that never ends ...

Welcome to my blog. I'm looking forward to sharing what's in my head with you over the coming weeks. You may find that a daunting prospect - and you would probably be right to do so - but, what the hell, let's all just jump on and enjoy the ride.

I intend posting regular entries on leadership and in particular how we can all develop our leadership capabilities. Not everyone can be a leader but I am a firm believer that we can all learn to behave as leaders to the benefit of ourselves and those around us.

You can look forward to frequent sound bite posts prompted by stuff that is going on in the wide world, regular in depth posts on aspects of leadership and occasional reviews of reference sources that I have enjoyed and found useful. You can also expect to see influences creeping in from my wide (some say weird) taste in music, film and books. There may be prizes if you spot the references.

I can look forward to the challenge of organising my thoughts into something worth reading and, hopefully, to generating some interesting responses from you the reader (you know who you are!)

Welcome on board.