Leadership involves guiding, inspiring, and motivating a group to achieve a common goal or vision. Influential leaders have strong communication skills, the ability to make decisions, and the ability to build and lead a high-performing team. They also always possess integrity, emotional intelligence, and a strong sense of vision and purpose. Additionally, great leaders can adapt to changing circumstances and constantly look for ways to improve and innovate.
The debate over whether leaders are born or can be made is ongoing. Effective leadership is likely a combination of both nature and nurture. Some individuals may possess certain natural qualities that make them more inclined to be leaders, while others may develop leadership skills through education and experience. Some believe that leadership is an innate quality that some individuals are born with, while others believe that leadership can be learned and developed through experience, training, and education.
I, with extreme prejudice, belong to the second group.
Even though there might seem to be evidence that certain personality traits, such as extroversion, emotional stability, and self-confidence, may be associated with successful leadership, my thesis is that these traits are common to most leaders, visible externally, and more constructs of confirmation bias rather than due to any robust analytic rigor. I believe leadership can be developed through experience, training, and education. I also think that leadership skills can be learned, and anyone can develop the ability to lead. Effective leaders can learn from their experiences, adapt their approach to different situations, and continuously improve their skills. Leadership is a 'thing' that can be measured, nurtured, thought, and grown!
Leadership can be challenging to measure, as it is a complex and multi-faceted concept that can manifest in many different ways. Several methods have been developed to assess and comprehensively view an individual's leadership abilities, like self-reported surveys and 360-degree evaluations. Behavioral analysis, via observing the actions and interactions of a leader and assessing their ability to inspire and guide high-performing teams, their ability to make effective decisions, and handle crises or challenging situations, must be used to measure leadership. However, they are not robust by themselves to get an accurate picture of leadership effectiveness unless they are explicitly tied to an individual leader's ability to drive fierce business results via 'correlating' improvements in leadership capability to improvements in performance metrics, such as financial performance, employee engagement, customer satisfaction, etc. The need of the hour is to upskill our comprehensive understanding of an individual's leadership capabilities; leadership is context-dependent and varies in different situations, so measuring leadership should be a holistic approach.
This is the Flywheel for growth; this is the way of Modern Leadership!
A flywheel is a mechanical device with a heavy wheel or disk. Flywheels are used in internal combustion engines, power generators, and other devices where a constant rotational speed is required. They are also used to smooth out fluctuations in power demand by storing energy during periods of low demand and releasing it during periods of high demand.
This concept can be used as a metaphor to help understand the interconnected nature of different aspects of leadership development and its measurement and how they can work together to accelerate business growth. The idea is that minor improvements in different parts of leadership development will create momentum that will ultimately lead to significant business growth.
Building a flywheel for business growth must begin with developing excellent leaders and measuring improvements. This will, in turn, drive unique employee experience to create momentum for a superior customer experience, thus resulting in exceptional business outcomes. In summary, the flywheel concept in leadership development and measurement refers to a holistic approach to growth where even minor yet consistent improvements in leadership excellence can create momentum that leads to significant growth across the entire business.
We have created this exact ecosystem at The Rejuvi Venture, Inc, and you are welcome to listen in and learn more on our zoom casts on our Rejuvi 45 site!
Enjoy!
Opmerkingen