Two plus two is four. Every time.
Leader plus team … doesn’t add up the same every time.
Leader plus employee – likewise.
As much as we love to think we can teach people to be leaders by teaching them leadership styles, leadership models, leadership rules – we can’t. Leadership doesn’t add up the same every time; it’s situational, a deeply fuzzy gray area, always different and unique. Because, of course, people and situations are always different and unique. (Shocking, I know!)
So, leadership isn’t math. I imagine this is one reason why leadership skills are often called “soft” skills, versus the “hard” skills of science and mathematics, but I dislike – to say the least – the corresponding implication that these “soft” skills are easier to learn, or that they’re less important in some way than the mathematics of finance and logistics, or the strict logic of code.
Sure, teach your aspiring leaders about the various models and – if you must – styles of leadership. (But read this and this first about leadership styles. I’m not a fan.)
But then help them learn their own style (yes, now I’ll happily use that word!), as I’ve written here. And remind them (and yourself!) that leadership is a practice, and an ongoing learning process.
Because too much of leadership development training focuses on a sort of mathematical model, where
leader + situation = specific action
And this, my friends, is where bad leadership arises.
Leadership isn’t math. It’s a lot more like – dare I say it – quantum physics. (Only not really. But you get my point, I trust.)
As a side note, yes, this requires trust. You have to trust your fledgling leaders to be self-reflective and honest enough to understand their own approach to leadership (their own personal style). And they need to trust you enough to feel okay with fumbling around a bit, diverging from those rules and models and styles, in the process of finding their own way. Contact me if you’d like to know more about this process.