The Essence of a Leader

Let’s talk about leading for a moment. By definition leading involves moving away from where you are to someplace else. In spite of all the rest of the garnish we put on it, leadership at its essence is about creating change, and showing the way from the known to the unknown.

This is what makes leadership a fundamentally different skill than management, supervision, or any of the numerous other activities that are so often erroneously lumped under the same category.  True, the skills of managing can serve a leader well, and perhaps even improve her effectiveness, but I would argue that they are not strictly necessary. Did Nelson Mandela change the course of his nation through management? I think not.

So given this prime directive, to show the way from the known to the unknown, what are the essential skills of a leader?

• Vision – A leader cannot show the way if she cannot “see”. Vision doesn’t require that the leader can see all the way to the end of the journey, but she has to know the general direction. She also has to be able to recognize obstacles and see the passages over, under, around or through.

• Conviction – I considered passion, courage or other more emotional words here, but the essence is that the leader needs to believe that the unknown is a worthy objective. This belief needs to be authentic (generally demonstrated through passion) because anything less will be apparent to the followers.

• Empathy – Compassion is the emotional response, empathy is the skill. Change is an emotional process and a leader must understand how those emotions will manifest themselves in the process. Virtually everything we need to know about listening, communicating, motivating, team building, conflict resolution and myriad other issues comes down to empathy.

• Authenticity – Self awareness is the internalization of empathy. Understand why you behave as you do, and unlock the secret to being authentic. Authenticity is the foundation of trust, and trust is the only real commodity on which a leader has to trade.

Does having these essential skills make you a good leader? No, but their absence virtually assures that you will not be. Start at the bottom of the list and commit to develop a deeper understanding of yourself. Deep understanding will enable transformation, and transformation will reveal authenticity. That will make the first three skills almost automatic.