Leadership gets tested here. It’s not so challenging if the leader himself is the originator of the thought. The originator has a much simpler task as he has to influence and align others around the ideas which he is passionate about. Not so difficult! Relatively much easier. Challenges in corporate environments come in deployment and broad based, where it needs to be percolated down and across. Leadership can be seen and observed when people align themselves with originators and in turn, align others. In my opinion, this alignment is the pipe wherein lies the opportunity of value gain or the risk of value loss! If understood and harnessed well, this is the area to nurture the competitive advantage. Organization culture is the key driving force that would facilitate it.
Can a successful wealth creator or an entrepreneur be called a leader (one may have such huge disconnects with some names), is a crowd mobilizer a leader (think of some politicians and you have such a bad taste), was Hitler a great leader?? Without any doubt, all such breeds have been able to harness the available energies and focus it on their areas of intervention with great effect. But then there are names like Mother Teresa, Gautam Budha, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi and you usually have a universal alignment on their leadership perspectives. They too have harnessed the available universal energies to a great effect and have been crowd mobilizers and alignment builders!
The question remains: What is leadership? And can it be understood simplistically?
That takes me to Stephen Covey and his teachings on Principle Based Leadership!! Probably we have an answer there.
