What Is Leadership Anyway? A Workshop With Different Questions

I find the concept of leadership full of paradoxes and ambiguities. The notion itself seems very personal to me and deeply ingrained in everyone’s individual experience.

Now, a complicated idea – difficult to understand or define – is very hard to teach to others in a leadership workshop. For some help I searched leadership quotes from big names to see if they give some clarity on this mystery: What does leadership mean at this time in human history? Here are a few that I found:

• The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.Kenneth Blanchard, University of Massachusetts, Schatz, Managing By Influence, (Prentice-Hall, 1986)
• Contrary to the opinion of many people, leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work. Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970, Professional football coach
• Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it. Henry Mintzberg, McGill University School of Management, The Nature of Managerial Work, Harper & Row, 1973
• The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. Theodore Roosevelt, American President
• Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.  Steve Jobs
• Leadership includes wisdom of the mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Author Unknown

What is your best leadership quote?

My Leadership Questions

I realized that when it comes to leadership, I have some key questions that I like to explore. Questions like:

• What if true leadership is more about “unlearning” and “stop doing” than adopting yet another management concept?
• What if all we need about leadership is an awareness of our “implicit” theory of leadership, the one we are already using?
• If leadership is not only about influencing others, what can leadership also be about?