How to be the best leader that you can be
Frustrated by an apparent inability to develop my own leadership skills quickly enough to keep me out of trouble (see My Story), and wondering if perhaps the conventional wisdom that: “great leaders are born, not made” was true after all, I read all the books I could find on the subject. While much of what I read was anecdotal - although often interesting and sometimes amusing – eventually I saw a pattern emerging that challenged the popular belief and in fact showed that great leaders make themselves.
It is only by developing their full character, by combining emotional intelligence with their other more conventional/practical technical and managerial qualities, that they are able to pass the ultimate leadership test, where:
 A true leader is not the one with the most followers, but the one who creates the most leaders.
Dr Donald Walsch
The idea that emotional intelligence is crucial to leadership had been appearing in leadership thinking for some time, but Collins helped to cement its significance when, in his book “Good to Great”, he described the level 5, or great, leader as one who:
Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Jim Collins.
Two other writers, Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, have written extensively on the crucial role played by emotional intelligence (EI) in leadership and had a major influence on my own thinking about leadership:
Even if they get everything else just right, if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they will do will work as well as it could or should.
Daniel Goleman
Emotional intelligence largely determines how leaders do what they do. But to understand further what makes a great leader we also need to know what they should do, in particular what they should do that is different from what managers do. Here, one leadership thinker – John Kotter - emerges ahead of the rest. Kotter identified four main leadership activities: setting a direction; aligning people; motivating people; creating a culture of leadership.
The final piece of the jigsaw is an understanding of the role that leadership style plays in a leader’s ability to apply EI to what they do. Goleman identified six different leadership styles: visionary; commanding; coaching; democratic; affiliate; pace setting. Typically, leaders favour only one or two different styles but to be truly great leaders need to be able to vary their style according to their situation.
So now you know: what leaders do, the different styles they can adopt in pursuing their leadership goals and the extent to which their success is determined by how emotionally intelligent they are. But, if you’re a leader yourself, how can you apply this knowledge to your own situation and make yourself a better leader?
You have a choice. You could read the books I found useful in shaping my own thinking about leadership.
Leadership reading – a complete list of the sources for the leadership accelerator.
Alternatively, you can download the paper I produced as a result of my researches. By the way, we call it an accelerator because reading it will speed up your knowledge and understanding.
View the Leadership Accelerator. (Acrobat PDF)
Reading this paper and acting upon the advice it offers will not only save you a lot of time, it will also provide you with a powerful model that integrates leadership activities, and leadership styles, with the nineteen different emotional competencies that emotional intelligence comprises. This model is designed to give you a practical framework for advancing your own leadership skills. Good luck!
Be the change you want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
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