Donna Fitzgerald

Woke up this morning with one with that answer to something I’ve wondered about for years. Most management books tend to insist that anyone can be a leader and yet on a day to day basis most of us see dozens of situations where those who should be leading aren’t.  The answer to this conundrum turns out to be so painfully simple that I’m embarrassed to admit that it ever eluded me.  The answer is that anyone can be a leader provided they have the a vision of the change they wish to enlist help in making, and the courage to be responsible for any harm that comes to the people they end up leading.  So that’s it and it’s mighty darn simple.  Leadership can be many things but at its heart it requires courage, responsibility and a vision.  Take anyone of the three away and it doesn’t work.  

From this basic insight we can build out a complete model and help people improve on communicating their vision or possibly even more fundamentally ensuring that the vision is something others care about enough to adopt as their own.  By the way the difference between a visionary and a leader is that someone wants to follow a leader to bring the vision into reality.  A visionary is someone who might have been right in what they were trying to sell but couldn’t convince anyone to join them on the journey.  

The need for courage is something I’ve found increasingly interesting in its growing absence.  30 years ago when I started my career, courage was a quality that was actively cultivated in my profession.  In fact, I was told that if I wasn’t willing to put my job on the line at any time to ensure that the company fulfilled it’s responsibilities to it’s stockholders (no book cooking allowed) I simply wasn’t worthy of being in the profession.  No ifs, no ands, and no buts.  I have been fortunate to never work for a firm that was doing anything shady but the fact that there might be a time when I was required to put the good of the company over my own good is a concept that I think has contributed positively to how I lead my projects, and programs.  

It should be obvious that my approach to most things is to establish a very basic framework and then layer on the complexities from there.  My view of leadership says no one has to give you a position of power to make you a leader.  Obviously some positions make it easier to effect change than others but no position makes you a leader.  I also like the simplicity that says there’s no sense opening my mouth and complaining if I don’t have a solution to offer (rule number 1) and (rule number 2) my solution is only good if other people think its good (creating followership).  Finally if I enlist people to follow me then I am responsible for ensuring that we as a team have the highest possible chance of success.  It doesn’t mean our endeavor has to be risk free.  It just means that we need to stand a chance.

What I’d be interested in hearing from others is how you view your leadership responsibilities on a project.  How do you judge yourself?  How do you set about improving any area where you think you could do better?

For more on Leadership see my earlier post Attracting Followers