Regenerate!

Leadership is often described in terms of vision, inspiration, courage, passion, dynamism, motivation, change & transformation, mobilization etc. While all these are important outcomes or facets of leadership they do not offer many clues about how to get there if one wants to develop leadership skills.

When I think about leadership, I can think about feeling responsible and doing something about it. If I think of leadership in the context of organizations I can say that to improve leadership skills one needs to get better at a range of competencies.

A leader should be able to grasp and face reality in all its complexities. The reality must cover ‘own and internal’ reality. The leader should be able to both handle and harness emotions well. He \ she should be able to identify and implement values.  The leader should be able to generate and harness small and big ideas, generate excitement and develop them into overarching vision. The leader should be able to connect with the organization’s goals and generate breakthroughs in projects and processes. He \ she should be able to learn quickly and teach for developing people. The leader should be able to develop an agenda covering all above and should be able to communicate it simply and directly.

At different points of an executive’s career and depending on the organization’s situation the emphasis would shift, but I have come to believe that above competencies remain core.

Having defined the competencies in these specific terms it easier to think about ways of getting there.

There are many facets of leadership -vision, values, transformation, and others. Leadership competencies include ability to understand reality, ability to see the larger picture, ability to marshal resources, passion for developing people, and more.

But if I am asked,  “what is a leader’s ‘output’” or “what is the ‘outcome’ of leadership?”, I will say that on a day-today basis the outcome of ‘good’ leadership is inspiring people to accomplish something, making a routine job worthwhile.

And what is ‘inspiration’? It is feeling which gives that booster dose of energy. If the primary outcome of good leadership is inspiration, can there be able leadership without good emotional capabilities?

Emotional capability is that X-factor behind successful leadership. Emotional capability is not just emotional intelligence.

Without the ability to understand emotions, without the ability to deal with them, and without the ability to harness them, much of a leader’s thinking will remain just thinking and every action will need exercise of formal authority. No matter, what position a leader occupies there are many crucial aspects that are beyond his formal powers. He or she must have that X-factor.

Given the way in which people get their education and ‘training’ on the job, most have learned and have come to believe that emotions are bad, particularly in business or in serious work. This becomes a major factor that hinders capable people from realising full potential -theirs’ and others’.

Development of this X-factor, therefore, is one of the cornerstones of developing leadership skills.