Sunday, January 28, 2007

Why Lead?

People have wondered why I focus on leadership in this blog. I continue to see evidence that some people don't have a basic understanding of what leadership means. They have various ideas about leadership including getting others to do what they want, being at the top of the heap, or getting to set the direction.

Teams of people want to be successful. Unfortunately, they often lack the skill to clarify what success looks like, coordinate their differing ideas of success, agree on the right way to get there, or sometimes even motivate themselves toward action. Teams need help to be successful. A leader's job is to provide this help.

Note that the role of the leader is to help the team find the team's vision, not impose the leader's vision on the team. The role of the leader is to coordinate the tasks the team needs to achieve success, not order them to do tasks. Leadership is fundamentally about making a team successful, not about building the leader's ego. Leadership is a servant role not a boss role.

I write about leadership to help more teams be successful.

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