No Bullsh*t Leadership

I hesitate to waste my time and yours on yet another blog on Leadership.

Yet never has the subject been more important. We look around our world and see millions of people yearning for leaders who can help them fulfil their potential. And we need leaders everywhere - in politics, science, and business, in our schools, hospitals and prisons.

Where are the great (if occasionally flawed) leaders of the past? We live in a time where people, particularly, but by no means exclusively, the young, demand leadership by consent. Yet paradoxically we see, in public life at least, the return of the demagogue.

For many, Leadership is becoming a word devalued by over-promise and under-delivery, by the waffle of business schools and business books, by the perceived failings of politicians and businessmen and women.

We increasingly demand flawless leaders yet ask them to be human; we demand honesty, yet dare them to admit to errors.

It is a word that has been drowned by words, crying out for the salvation of action.

We have always previously believed that leaders are the people right at the very top of our public life: Politicians and CEOs; Generals and Dot-com billionaires.

The reality, however, is that today, thousands of us are leaders; anybody who runs a hospital ward, a weekend football team, a high school department, a 30 person start-up, is a leader. Most will never have a Harvard case study written about them, indeed many may not even recognise themselves as leaders. Our complicated and interwoven societies are full of these people and it will enrich all our lives if greater numbers amongst us are not just able to recognise the leadership opportunity we have, but feel a little more confident and able to take up our authority.

Not everybody is a leader and not everybody wants to be, but many thousands are and each are striving to fulfil their own lifelong ambitions, worrying at night about how they're doing and agonising about the successes and failures of those who rely on them.

These are the leaders who make our societies tick and outnumber millions-to-one, the subjects of business school case studies.

Not only are leaders all around us, the top-down world we grew up in is disappearing. Simple, old-fashioned management is becoming less effective and less relevant across our societies, in our companies and even in how our countries themselves are run.

Today, as never before, people expect to have a voice, have a say and be listened to. We can only unlock our collective potential by unlocking the potential of the hundreds of thousands of leaders in our midst.

In various guises I, like many people, have been a leader for the majority of my career, although for many years I didn't think in that way or even recognise that that was my role. However, it was only around 10 years ago that I began to think seriously about what leadership is and how it can be done well - or badly.

This, then is a blog built on the years where I failed more than the successes. My hope isn't that you don't fail - periods of failure are inevitable and acceptance of this is a liberating state. Rather, my hope is that through avoiding making my mistakes, through cutting through the nonsense that surrounds leadership, through being able to focus yourself and your team on what matters most - your victories will rapidly exceed your defeats.

This is my first blog on Leadership and there will be more. If that doesn't fill you with dread then why not follow me on Twitter @chrishirst and LinkedIn https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/chrishirst/

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