Why Leadership Development Is So Challenging
By Elizabeth Mills and Herb Rubenstein
Introduction
Successful leadership requires that a person be able to analyze a current situation, understand enough of its history to see why the challenging situation is the way it is, and identify and deploy the right kinds of resources to bring to bear to help solve the challenge. If leadership were as easy as these three steps, all of us would be better leaders.
This article describes some of the key behaviors that leaders need to deploy in order to be successful. Leadership can be learned and can be taught. The idea that someone is born a leader is just as sensible as a person is born an Olympic Gold Medalist. To win a gold medal, one needs to train, have superior coaching, and hone their skills. To be a successful leader, one also needs to train to be a leader. People can train “on the job” or “through the school of hard knocks,” but this form of training is haphazard and takes decades. Excellent leadership training can shorten the time and reduce the pain that people go through in improving their leadership skills. Every element of leadership cannot be learned in the classroom, just as one cannot become successful in any endeavor just by sitting in the classroom. Experience is important, especially those types of leadership experiences that are well planned and based on a solid strategy.
Leadership Behaviors
Leadership behaviors are multidimensional and cannot always be quantified. However, leadership behaviors have three characteristics in common. The leader must be cognitive, active, and inspirational. Highly successful leaders are able to recognize their surroundings and circumstances. Accordingly, they are able to take appropriate action or inaction, and then inspire others (sometimes softly and sometimes strongly) to be led.
Below, we identify key leadership behaviors. Regarding many of these behaviors we will list them not as a single behavior, but as previously mentioned, a dimension of related behaviors that span the range of behaviors in that particular area. One should not view these as contradictory in any manner. For example, a leader must be persistent, and must be patient. These terms are to be viewed as complementary, not as opposites. Recognizing and knowing when to be persistent (most of the time), and when to be patient, (when the situation dictates a leader to be patient) are both key elements of being a leader. The goal of listing these behaviors is to help raise your consciousness as you seek to become a better leader or to evaluate others who lead in a particular situation. Whether you are mentoring someone, or just yourself, this list of behaviors can become a checklist for you to observe yourself or others and to guide you to becoming a better leader.
LEADERS ARE PEOPLE WHO……………
Are decisive when appropriate and patient when necessary
Inspire others to achieve greatness
Motivate themselves constantly
Promote greatness in others
Hold others accountable for actions
Take charge
Delegate
Serve
Pick their battles
Are outgoing and energetic
Thoughtful and Insightful
Exhibit strength and courage
Wary and doubtful when appropriate
Willing to sacrifice for others
Willing to ask others to sacrifice for them
Aware of their surroundings
Able to ignore/overcome barriers
Desire to control
Willing to work as a team members
Listen to others
Speak to others
Understand the meaning of what is being said
Communicates forcefully
Understand why things occur
Are future-centric, not history-centric
Build consensus
Take charge when necessary
Collaborative
Use experts to solve technical problems
Not afraid of failure
Hate failure
Accept responsibility
Share responsibility
Have vision, can set goals
Excellent tactician
Can form strategic plans to achieve goals
Act unilaterally without a plan only when necessary
Ability to recognize and accommodate weakness
Do not tolerate weaknesses well
Recognizes where group lacks knowledge/skill
Play to the strengths of the group
Are great followers
Are great leaders
Understand/communicate “what is in it for you”
Build high level purpose for the group, others
Have optimism
Are realists
Have and promotes credibility
Are able to attack lack of credibility successfully
Can effectuate change
Know not to try to change everything
Can successfully maintain status quo as needed
Can show others benefits of change
Are conciliatory
Are demanding
Respond well
Are proactive
Garner discoveries and use discoveries
Rely on verified, useful information
Manage conversations - do not dominate them
Lead with probing questions
Conclusion
Leadership is complex. Mastering the categories of behaviors allows leaders to be flexible in building the right kinds of behaviors for the right kinds of situations. This article has laid out many of the behavioral dimensions of leadership behavior. There are many additional categories of behaviors that leaders evoke to assist them in leading themselves and organizations. We hope you find this article useful in improving your leadership aptitude.