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Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves fail to recognise and realise in the course of reading books. Here is a short list of key practical issues to do with leadership.

1. Leaders come in different flavors.

There are different types of leaders and you will probably encounter more than one type in your lifetime. Formal leaders are those we elect into positions or offices such as members of parliament, committee leaders, and presidents of the local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up to because of their wisdom and experience such as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents; or by virtue of their expertise and contribution on a given field such as Albert Einstein in the field of Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of the Arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles. Read more…

An issue that often comes up on management training courses is how a leader can deal successfully with a conflict between their vision for their organization and what they know to be the reality of what is feasible when change is required in order to deliver that vision. This is often described as a conflict between vision and pragmatism.

One of a leader’s roles is to decide on the vision for their organisation and to decide upon the right things to do to achieve that vision. One of a leader’s challenges is to decide when a vision needs revisiting, to check if it is still appropriate, needs some fine-tuning or needs changing completely. This is particularly difficult if you are required to challenge some fundamental and long-held assumptions and organizational barriers to implementing change. Read more…

Do you ever worry about the lack of real leaders around the world? From a British perspective, do you feel a bit glum when you think about the General Election in  May 2010 and try to identify the genuine leaders amongst the front benches of the major parties?

A lot of people confuse leadership with management, thinking that the two are synonymous. Nothing could be further from the truth and in this article we are going to draw clear distinctions between the two before looking at the specifics of servant leadership.

Putting it simply, leadership is about deciding the right things to do whilst management is about doing things in the right way. Management is particularly concerned with the efficient use of resources. Peter Drucker once wrote that most organisations are over-managed and under-led and this can be seen when examining bankruptcies. The courts are full of companies that were highly efficient at doing the wrong things!

This can also be seen in the uptake, or lack of uptake, of Social Media in organisations. Many managers prefer to optimise current work practices rather than embrace change. If those same organisations lack leadership with the vision to see that the game is changing, then they are unlikely to successfully integrate Social Media into their culture. They will be highly efficient players in a game that no longer exists – they may dislike change, but eventually they will come to realise that they will like being increasingly irrelevant even less!

Leadership is about doing the right things and this has two dimensions to it. Choosing the right activities to be involved in and also ‘doing the right thing’, in other words, choosing the morally right thing to do. And this is where servant leadership comes in. The title of ‘Leader’ is not something that someone awards to themselves. It is something that is recognised in the individual by other people. In the increasingly transparent world that is a result of Web 2.0 and 3.0, self-proclaimed leaders without the track record to back it up will have a very short shelf-life.

And other than with senior appointments in organisations (and even then I’d argue that most are managers rather than leaders), leadership will be something one does with people, not to them. In fact I’d go a stage further and suggest that Servant Leadership will often be characterised by what the Leader can do for her/his people. The very name suggests that servant leadership is concerned with issues such as “How can I Serve my Team?”

What are the qualities, skills and behaviours of Servant Leaders? To adapt one of my favourite pieces of writing, I suggest that in practical terms, Servant Leaders:

Are patient
Are kind.
Do not envy,
Do not boast,
Are not proud.
Are not rude,
Are not self-seeking,
Are not easily angered,
Do not keep no of wrongs.
Do not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Will do the morally right thing rather than hide behind what is legal or expedient
Always protect, always trust, always hope, always persevere.

In order to be successful in whatever you wish to do, you need the right attitude and characteristics and demonstrate the right behaviours. The recent economic situation has led to many setting up in business for themselves but is this the right step for everyone? Is everyone suited to the role of entrepreneur? And are some people excluding themselves from taking this route because of misconceptions about what is required?

What are the characteristics of an entrepreneur? I suggest that, amongst other things, an entrepreneur is:

1. A Risk taker – this is critical. At some stage you will have to take one or more risks, the first of which will be the decision to set up your own business. If you’re not willing to take any risk, then you will not succeed as a businessperson. In the everyday course of the business, you will encounter a lot of problems and challenges which you need to decide the soonest.

Some risks are worth taking after careful evaluation especially if it’s for the good of the business. If you’re not a risk taker, then you’re not an effective entrepreneur and you’re bound to fail in your business undertaking.

2. Smart – being smart is another characteristic of an entrepreneur. You have to be clever, keen, honest and consistent in all your business dealings in order to win the respect and trust of customers and other clients. However, being smart is not the same as possessing an MBA. You don’t need high level academic qualifications to succeed in business. But you do need to be street smart, wise in the ways of people and of your chosen industry.

3. A leader – leadership is a characteristic that is hard to find among individuals. Not many individuals have the nerve to take the lead. You need to develop the confidence to be able to guide, influence, and direct people. Above all, leadership is about being effective, being able to choose the right activities to do, as well as being able to perform those activities efficiently.

To put it another way, being efficient is not enough; the bankruptcy courts are full of organisations that were efficient, but they were not doing the right things. The game had moved on and they hadn’t.

The other aspect is being prepared to take the lead, to innovate. Entrepreneurs are innovators, seeing opportunities that others don’t see, making connections that others don’t make.

4. A passion for your business – if you are not passionate about what you do, why should others be? And there’s a difference between motivation and passion – I am motivated to fill out my tax return but I’m certainly not passionate about it!

5. Honest and trustworthy – if you are not honest and trustworthy, you will develop very little repeat business which will then mean you are forever chasing new clients. And as word about you spreads, you will find it harder and harder to survive.

6. Be Able to Cope with Stress and Uncertainty – I know very few successful business people who didn’t wake up in the middle of the night in their early years, wondering if they can pay the mortgage. Most of us have had to chase payments from clients and deal with letters from concerned bank managers. And in the service industries, including consultancy, it’s easy to get into a situation where you are busy for 3 months and then have nothing; you were busy doing the work and had no time to sell.

7. Inquisitive – most successful business people I know are inquisitive about life, people, business, the world around them. They know their limits, so for example may choose to use a website designer, but often they are keen to learn new skills, to stretch themselves, especially in emerging areas. How many entrepreneurs who now blog quite happily and construct micro sites etc would have believed 5 years ago that they would have been doing it?

8. Have the ability to reduce complexity – the business world is full of people who like to complicate issues so that they can then sell their products and services as the solution to that complexity. As an example, look at the volume of sites selling reports, e-books and courses on how to make money from your website. They talk a lot of jargon; that way, if you don’t understand their language, they hope you will feel inadequate and buy from them.

In fact, the solution is simple: provide a quality product or service from a site with quality content. Attract a high volume of traffic and convert as much of that traffic as you can into business. Anything else is either merely ways of achieving those 4 things, or an irrelevance.

I’m sure that there are other characteristics, but these are the 8 that spring to my mind. What would you add to the list?

Effective leaders avoid the ‘expert’ trap.

In many organisations, people are promoted to positions of leadership based upon their ability and expertise in their current job. Once promoted, they end up telling people what to do, staying within the comfort zone of their job knowledge. Effective leaders learn that the best way is to empower and develop their staff by asking questions.