I talk a lot about leadership. Actually, plenty of people talk a lot about leadership. All you have to do is enter “#leadership” in one of the popular social media platforms to see how many posts are tagged with “leadership.”
There are so many good bits of advice floating around the internet on this topic, too. But one thing I’ve noticed, is that no matter what angle the advice seems to take, we cannot escape the fact that leadership is about people.
I know… We discuss character and tricks-of-the-trade or systems and useful leadership habits. But, please, make no mistake about it – leadership is really about people.
As a leader, you lead people. Well, er, okay. Maybe some people lead beings other than humans, but we have industry specific names for leading something besides people. For instance, shepherds lead sheep and cowboys lead cattle. But that list isn’t very long.
Besides, even with a few instances where we might consider leading as a skill focused on non-human beings, we still do not cross over into the idea of leading inanimate objects. You can’t lead machines or buildings or lamp posts. And until Artificial Intelligence includes Artificial Sentience, you can’t lead robots either.
Even when we talk about corporate leaders, they are still leading the employees of the corporation. In every circumstance where we use the term leader or more specifically leadership, people are involved.
So for the time being, leadership is intrinsically human. Hence, the main point of this article.
I’m beginning a series of articles that I will share across social media entitled The Human Element: Understanding the Key Ingredient to Great Leadership.
This series will discuss leadership from one distinct vantage point: humans. While there are traces of the human aspect in every book or article ever written on the topic, I’m not familiar with any source that solely focuses on leadership from the human perspective.
And this is where real problems come to light. If leadership intrinsically deals with one human leading other humans, why do so many people become leaders due to job performance or successful projects or whatever business justification is used – but have zero ability to actually lead, grow, mentor, encourage, care for, and/or interact with the people they are suppose to be leading?
My hope is this series will dig deep into important human-leading-human habits that will make a difference for those who join me on this journey.
I would greatly appreciate feedback from you (yes, all of you) throughout this series. I’m not attempting to deliver some edict from a lofty tower, but rather enter into a discussion with my larger social media sphere. If you see this article, you are in tat sphere of people. Please let me hear from you on each post as we tread into this familiar, but somewhat off-the-beaten-path territory of leadership.
Thanks for reading!
Rod
