Twisted Reality about Leadership

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Twisted reality about Leadership

Most of the time we don’t realise that we use some words so often that they loose their actual meaning and become just a synonym to some thing, place, or someone. One such word is “Leadership”. When we talk about Leadership there is no specific definition that can define all leaders perfectly. Every Leader is a different human being, and just like any other person, they also have their own living style, working methods, and individual personality. Regardless of this fact of being different, leaders and leadership has been high generalised in various ways, below are the most common of them that I have come across over the time

Leadership is a title for Senior Management Team

It is the most common generalisation that we find in any society, culture or organisation, people salute to the title and follow them as leaders. But they forget that regardless of what positions we hold in our life, or at workplace, we all are leaders of our own work. The position or the title doesn’t hold the leadership values, it’s your actions, thoughts, values, decisions and risks that you take make you a leader. In reality, we all have a role to play as leaders in our own areas.

Leadership is a state of mind, and not the position

As humans we all show leadership qualities in our day to day life, it’s not to be tagged with a title, as not all of carries titles with us but qualities. You see, Living a life and just not dying are two different things. If you never take risks of taking decisions in life you would just live, but won't lead the life.

We are Hard working and Leaders hardly working

I have come across many such people, who blames their leaders hide themselves behind the tag of “Smart Working” against the “Hard working” and just do nothing and making them do all the hard work. In other terms, I would say, they get confused with the term “Smart work” with “No Work”. Smart work doesn’t mean that the leaders don’t work hard, they use ways to work smartly, as they plan, priortize, delegate and execute their actions.

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” – Colin Powell

Every single successful leader that I ever known have worked really hard to be there where they are. It’s just that these leaders are very watchful of their time, as they have lot of dreams and visions to fulfil, and only 24 hours in a day. So, you might tag it as “Smart working” but their is a lot “Hard working” happens at the backend

Leaders must know it all

Although it’s true that successful leaders do have clear vision and understanding what they are doing, however, that does not mean that they know it all. Great leaders know their limitations and they always are keen to look for way to learn what they don’t know. That’s why good leaders will always have some answer to every question, because they keep learning. Even if they don’t know the right answer, they will ask for time so that they can come back with one.

Above all, a good leader always knows that Leader is only if he has people, so he realizes the fact that it takes a team to achieve bigger goals and do the real innovation. Hence, a good leader is always in search from great people to join the team and make him a greater and more successful leader. They don’t know it all, but they have people who does. So they tend to listen more than speaking, and they listen to understand rather to answer.

“You don’t build business, you build people and they build business for you”

More famous you are greater the leader you are

Well, since this misconception is already there that Leaders are always at the higher levels in an organisation, it tends to become quite obvious that being a leader they are tend to be the face of an organisation or the group which puts them in the limelight. However, Fame doesn’t bring greatness as a leader. Great leaders are actually not worried about being famous, they generally care about the results which in turn make them famous.

So, in reality fame does not bring greatness, however, great leaders tend to get fame. However, not always! There had been many great leaders who kept them away from the fame and stayed simple, and yet took their companies to new heights.

They are born not made

There is this very old saying about leaders that they are born not made, however I beg to differ, since Leadership is a combination of skill and ‘will’ of an individual to be a leader. So if someone has a ‘will’ to be a great leader, than he can develop the skill at any time to any extent.

“Leaders are made, they are not born, they are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile” - Vince Lombardi

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