On leadership training courses, there is often considerable emphasis on the qualities a good leader should possess. Integrity. Emotional intelligence. Empathy. The ability to motivate people. Intelligence. Charisma.
Looking the part rarely makes the list. But here's a more interesting question: why are these qualities always presented as leadership essentials? Surely, they are qualities we should expect of any good manager - and, for that matter, any good colleague. They may help someone lead effectively, but they don't tell us what leadership actually IS.
Which brings us to a surprisingly difficult question: what IS leadership?
It's one of those words everyone thinks they understand until they're asked to define it.
Is leadership about being in charge of a team? If so, what happens to the nurse who comes up with an idea that transforms the way an entire ward operates? They have no team reporting to them. They may not even have a management title. But their idea changes how people work.
Is that nurse a leader?
And what about the employee who rarely speaks to anyone, let alone inspires a room full of people, but develops a new way of dealing with customers that saves the organisation millions of pounds? No team, no charisma, no grand speeches. Just an idea that makes a significant difference.
Meanwhile, a newly promoted team leader arrives immaculately turned out, ticks all the boxes on the leadership competency framework and makes very little difference to performance. Yet the title says leader.
Something doesn't quite add up.
Perhaps we've become too preoccupied with what leaders look like, how they behave and what qualities they possess - and not sufficiently focused on what leadership actually achieves.
Leadership is a capability that shapes how work gets done, how people respond to pressure and whether good intentions turn into results. It can be exercised by someone with formal authority, but it can also emerge from someone with no authority at all. A job title may give you the opportunity to lead; it doesn't guarantee that you do.
This matters enormously for organisations investing in leadership development. The goal should not be to produce a workforce of charismatic leaders who all demonstrate the same approved behaviours. It should be to develop ordinary individual staff members who at key moments are not afraid to take responsibility, exercise sound judgement, speak up and shape the performance of those around them.
Perhaps the real test of leadership isn't how much someone looks like a leader, but how much difference they make.
All the best from
- Mike Lynch & the Northgate Team
Keep Training!
P.S. Think of three people in your organisation who have done most to improve how work gets done. Would your current leadership programme have picked them?
