How you define and exercise leadership in today’s climate will be a significant determinant of your organization’s fortunes, and especially in the context of change management.

Let’s define leadership: Leadership is the process by which one person influences others to achieve a goal. Leaders have a vision that they share with others. He is the leader who unites the organization with beliefs, values ​​and knowledge… and who makes it more cohesive and coherent.

Leadership is also defined as a process that… motivates people to excel in the field in which they are working.

This is you? Is this your direct upline report?

So can leadership be taught?

Many would say that leadership qualities are not innate but can be developed gradually through education and self-learning. Personally I’m not so sure about that.

The current assumption is that leadership can be taught. There are many courses, seminars and books on leadership and a great demand for training to develop leadership skills.

Based on my life experience and how I define leadership, it is my opinion that leadership skills can only be taught to someone who has latent ability. [and maybe unrecognised and unacknowledged] potential to be a leader.

Management skills can be taught to almost anyone with at least average intelligence and education. [and in saying that I am not denigrating management]. However, a brief review of the differences between leadership and management suggests that leadership owes as much to “nature” as it does to “nurture.”

It may not be a popular thing to say, but in my experience, most people would rather be guided than led. In my experience, the vast majority of people are followers, not leaders, and are quite happy to remain so. The leaders are a very small percentage of the population, maybe less than 1% and really strong leaders with the potential to really change things. [for better or worse] probably less than 0.1%.

Leadership vs. Management: Some Useful Points of Comparison

– Leaders are apparent – Managers are appointed

– Leaders deal with change – Managers deal with complexity

– Leaders and management – Managers plan

– Leaders push for change – Managers promote stability

– Leaders are visionary, inspiring, and have an eye on the future – Managers are operational, practical, and “now” based

– Leading is concerned with future direction – Managing is concerned with uncertain conditions: implementation, order, efficiency and effectiveness

– Leadership is strategic – Management is operational

– Leaders set direction – Managers develop the ability to achieve the plan

– Leaders motivate and inspire – Managers control and solve problems

– Leaders need to ‘go out on the balcony’ to detect operational and strategic patterns within the organization. – Managers get caught up in the field of action.

– Leadership defines the culture of the organization – Management instills the culture in the organization

Leadership in change management

Both sets of skills are clearly needed.

But very often in change management situations, the emphasis is on process and situation management rather than leadership.

The leadership characteristics described above are crucial for fulfilling the role of director/leader of a change program: [and being seen to lead and own] the entire change initiative.

How we define leadership, how we understand it, and how we exercise it, is paramount in today’s economic and business climate, as the quality of your leadership could be a major factor in determining the fate of your company, and especially in a change management situation. . And this is where properly applied leadership skills are exercised to their best effect when the holistic, long-sighted perspective of a program-based approach to change management is employed.