Chapter News

The why of Leadership

Looking at the last poll result we submitted in our LinkedIn space, we heard your call to action, and we decided to start a series of articles about Leadership. 

To kick off our series today, we will talk about the core of Leadership. It's a complex and complicated subject where everyone has their vision and experience: there is no right or wrong answer.

Often mistaken solely for authority, Leadership is the subtle art of influencing others. That's why we have so many variations to adapt to the diversity of the human psyche.

The one common denominator to all of them is to be proactive in taking action. Taking action doesn't necessarily mean taking ownership of everything and drowning in work, but asking ourselves the right questions and finding the right person with the right talent to enable them and inspire them to be leaders.

Jack Welch wisely said, "when you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

To grow others, the questions we need to ask ourselves are:

• Is everyone doing what they are good at? 
• Is there any way to exploit their talents in their current position?
• Is everyone satisfied with their role, or is there any frustration that hinders everyone from reaching their full potential?
• What's the role inside the team dynamic of this person (such as enabler, expert, team player, leader, creative, fixer.. etc.)?

Only after we find answers to all of the above can we decide which actions are necessary to capitalize on other people's skills. As every reader knows, this requires a certain proficiency in different leadership techniques and, above all, soft skills such as active listening, strategic thinking, and delegation.

But how to choose among different leadership styles? And how to master the ones that are counterintuitive for us? What are the actions to enable our colleagues and ourselves?

We will leave these answers for future articles of this series.