A colleague, having read my recent post “Leadership, Power, and Conflict,” shared his definition of leadership with me.
“A leader is someone who has followers.”
He added, “So, if you want to be a leader, you need to do two things: (1) Pick a direction and (2) Get people to follow you.”
Simple, thought-provoking, and eye-opening, this demands that we ask ourselves: in what direction are our leaders going?
Whether we’ve chosen someone as a leader (mentor, teacher, respected celebrity, political figure … ), or we’ve been assigned a leader (our manager, our organization’s executive team … ), is that person going in a direction we want to go?
If not, why are we following them?