Leadership thought

Thought-provoking videos and material on other websites on leadership.

Would you like to be the leader I want you to be?

This excellent article, by the always interesting Mel Schwartz, is valuable for the light it shines on personal relationships.  But, as always, this material is equally applicable to business relationships.

Try reframing the question.  For example, ask your clients if they would like to ask you, “Would you like to be the supplier I want you to be?”  What then?

Or ask a colleague, “Would you like to be the colleague I want you to be?”

The point is that, if you accept that the primary function of a leader is to create a facilitating environment in which the individual, the team and the enterprise can thrive, why wouldn’t you find out from those in the team how you can do it best for them?

Emotional intelligence is a key trait for effective leadership

“Being able to understand and use emotions in an effective manner is a crucial attribute one needs for great leadership” says Ned Smith (interesting use of the word “use”).  There’s one thing that most managers of high performing businesses have in common beyond operational smarts:  they have emotional smarts as well, a new survey shows…

Lead like the great conductors

Itay Talgam talks on leadership illustrated with clips of various conductors. I hesitate to describe it as a talk about conducting as the speaker omits too much, starting with the fact that all the performances – whether Strauss’s or Bernstein’s – will have been achieved in rehearsal, as Bernstein so nicely illustrates at the end.

For us at emotional intelligence at work, the rehearsal is the work, because it is the creation of the performance, and true leadership is getting the right results doing the legwork in rehearsal. Showing off how clever you are (whether the conductor or the orchestra) looks a bit like an ego trip to us. It would have been interesting to see clips of some more self-effacing conductors, such as Bernard Haitink and Colin Davis – conductors often praised for bringing out the essence of the music rather than their interpretation of it.

In search of the good-enough leader

  What is ‘good enough’? The thing about ‘good enough’ is that it contains the word ‘good’. Not ‘average’, not ‘compromise’. But ‘good enough’ is a valuable concept because it guards against perfectionism which is just a trap preventing us from moving forward.  Lonnie Pacelli discusses what leaders do when they are good enough in this article. At emotional intelligence at work, we distinguish between leadership (which is an attitude) and “being in charge” (which is a role).  Pacelli conflates these two – as do most people, of course.  The article is somewhat biased towards the behavioural, but it contains some interesting thought.