Leadership development should develop leaders for the real world
You remember the real world. It’s where most of us live. That’s the world where leaders are people who have followers. Nothing fancy about that.
Note well: “leaders are people who have followers.†That’s people like you and me. Not superior people, not people with amazing gifts they were born with, just people doing their work. Nothing fancy about that, either.
Some people have or aspire to positions in the organization where leadership is part of their job. It’s work. Some people work at fixing cars. Some people work at making sales. Some people work at leading. There’s sure nothing fancy about that.
So why, in the name of all that is sensible, do we have to overlay leadership and leadership development with so much junk?
Leadership development is about helping people develop skills and habits
Forget all the nonsense about “real†leaders and “genuine†leaders and “authentic†leaders. Leadership is about doing work. Leadership development is about helping people learn to do that work well.
Boil it down to the basics and leadership is about doing two things. One is accomplishing the mission, whatever that is, through a team. The other is about helping the members of that team grow and develop.
Leaders all have to consider two time frames: today and tomorrow. You have to make trade-offs. Sometimes you sacrifice learning to get the job done today. Other times you sacrifice performance today while you create the learning to yield better performance tomorrow.
Leadership development for the real world
Let’s try going back to basics. Let’s forego the fancy language and exalted definitions. Let’s just help people develop the skills and habits they need to be and become effective leaders.
