The leadership guru, John C. Maxwell, defined leadership as nothing more or less than your ability to influence people. But this is just half of the story. Without the other half, it becomes outright foolishness. The second half is called judgment. To be able to influence people and lead them to a wise direction are two ways that a leader must be able to do. This becomes most clear when one considers bureaucracies - power, but no judgement. True leaders evolve. False leaders fail in an evolutionary environment. This is why leaders need to come from the coal face, not a sheltered workshop.
Maxwell is quite right that without influence, one cannot be considered a leader. He used to say a phrase that goes, if you think you are a leader, but no one is following you, then really, you're just a guy taking a walk. Maxwell also identifies levels of leadership, starting with the legalised leader, moving through the charismatic to the truly legendary leader. That is a good perspective to keep when thinking about the leadership of most government departments. We do what they say because we get in trouble if we don't. And that is the basest level of leader.
If you have a plan to win and has reasonable chance of doing so, you are a good leader. Churchill would still have been a great leader if Britain had narrowly lost WWII to the Nazis. But General Custer was never a good leader. This is because good judgement is just as fundamental to leadership as influence. The ability to get people to follow you to hell is not good leadership. It is getting them to follow you to hell and back that is most profound. So where do we find leaders with judgement?
Firstly, Judgement has to be refined by experience. One has various theories about how the world runs. With experience as a leader, one gets to test these theories against the real world. Those leaders who achieve on-going success are those who have understood the nature of the world. This is the first contrast to bureaucrats, who typically run on some type of socialist ideology and don't seem to notice when it doesn't work. In order to develop leadership, one needs to gain experience in leading in the real world where reality bites. Until you have failed, you don't know if you were right or just lucky the first time. So there must be a feedback system. The important thing for the individual leader here is the ability to learn from mistakes and grow from the experience.
The second factor is failing. Leaders should be allowed to fail, and only those who succeed get to progress to the next level. Not everybody gets to win though. In business, entrepreneurs launch companies all the time. Some fail. But those who succeed call themselves leaders because they lead people to success. Influence and judgement. In military, winning battles require influence and judgment. But in society, only the best leaders get to move to the next level.
In bureaucracy, favour is on the side of people who are good at influence, but less at judgment. The feedback mechanism is not so popular. Many bureaucrats operate in what seems to those of us who compete in the real world as a sheltered workshop. They seem to be at the school where everybody gets points for trying, and there are no winners or losers. Sadly, these people also make most of the decisions that affect your everyday life. Promotion within bureaucracies is based on politics - the ability to play the game. The decision-makers never feel the pain of their incompetence.
There are two things involving evolutionary leadership. The first is the contact between the leader and the real world, whereby the individual leader can learn from mistakes and evolve as a leader. Secondly, it is about an evolutionary environment, where only the successful survive.
Before the Anglo-American Empire can recover from its current spiral into mediocrity, there needs to be a restructure of government decision making processes. Government decision makers need to be born and bred in an evolutionary leadership environment. The current sheltered workshop bureaucracy only encourages game players, not leaders.
Maxwell is quite right that without influence, one cannot be considered a leader. He used to say a phrase that goes, if you think you are a leader, but no one is following you, then really, you're just a guy taking a walk. Maxwell also identifies levels of leadership, starting with the legalised leader, moving through the charismatic to the truly legendary leader. That is a good perspective to keep when thinking about the leadership of most government departments. We do what they say because we get in trouble if we don't. And that is the basest level of leader.
If you have a plan to win and has reasonable chance of doing so, you are a good leader. Churchill would still have been a great leader if Britain had narrowly lost WWII to the Nazis. But General Custer was never a good leader. This is because good judgement is just as fundamental to leadership as influence. The ability to get people to follow you to hell is not good leadership. It is getting them to follow you to hell and back that is most profound. So where do we find leaders with judgement?
Firstly, Judgement has to be refined by experience. One has various theories about how the world runs. With experience as a leader, one gets to test these theories against the real world. Those leaders who achieve on-going success are those who have understood the nature of the world. This is the first contrast to bureaucrats, who typically run on some type of socialist ideology and don't seem to notice when it doesn't work. In order to develop leadership, one needs to gain experience in leading in the real world where reality bites. Until you have failed, you don't know if you were right or just lucky the first time. So there must be a feedback system. The important thing for the individual leader here is the ability to learn from mistakes and grow from the experience.
The second factor is failing. Leaders should be allowed to fail, and only those who succeed get to progress to the next level. Not everybody gets to win though. In business, entrepreneurs launch companies all the time. Some fail. But those who succeed call themselves leaders because they lead people to success. Influence and judgement. In military, winning battles require influence and judgment. But in society, only the best leaders get to move to the next level.
In bureaucracy, favour is on the side of people who are good at influence, but less at judgment. The feedback mechanism is not so popular. Many bureaucrats operate in what seems to those of us who compete in the real world as a sheltered workshop. They seem to be at the school where everybody gets points for trying, and there are no winners or losers. Sadly, these people also make most of the decisions that affect your everyday life. Promotion within bureaucracies is based on politics - the ability to play the game. The decision-makers never feel the pain of their incompetence.
There are two things involving evolutionary leadership. The first is the contact between the leader and the real world, whereby the individual leader can learn from mistakes and evolve as a leader. Secondly, it is about an evolutionary environment, where only the successful survive.
Before the Anglo-American Empire can recover from its current spiral into mediocrity, there needs to be a restructure of government decision making processes. Government decision makers need to be born and bred in an evolutionary leadership environment. The current sheltered workshop bureaucracy only encourages game players, not leaders.
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Interested in hunting and social issues? Why not try David Greentree's new book, 'Tom Grafton Vs The Environmentalists'.
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