Hey Leadership! Why are you so elusive?

I tried them all.

Read all the leadership books (James McGregor Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Warren Bennis, John Maxwell, et al), I read biographies (Steve Jobs, Mandela), autobiographies (Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama), watched the movies (Gandhi) and movie clips (for example, Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday), took webinar courses, attended classroom training (several). My leadership consumption ranged from political leaders to business leaders, to historical figures, to revolutionaries, to spiritual leaders.

I also took the psychometric tests, psychological tests, went through formal assessments (6-8 hours long), completed 360s on Leadership.

I had mentors, coaches, advisors, bosses who tried teaching me leadership. I had jobs that in leadership development, taught leadership, I had titles that had 'leadership' in them. I tried different leadership models and different schools of leadership.

I examined my strengths (several times), my weakness (this one, others examined several times), I looked at what got me here and realized it won’t get me there. I explored if leadership meant what I have in me as traits, or what I did as deeds. I read the quotes on Leadership, devoured magazines and periodicals that spoke about the 10 definitions, 8 virtues, 5 pillars, 20 dos and 500 don’ts of leadership. I looked at 50 traits, 80 competencies, 40 capabilities on leadership and even evaluated myself and others on them.

Yet, despite this deep soaking, I am (still) left wanting on myself as a leader. Still left with the feeling that ‘I am not there’, still left feeling that even though I pretend, I cannot but help feel that I am an imposter of a leader.

Why? Everywhere I turn, and every time I turn, there is still something more, something else that I need to get better at. Yet another ingredient to add to the recipe. Yet another new medication to swallow on leadership.

Maybe it’s just me and my inadequacies…but I feel that Leadership is elusive. The more you think you are there, the more you are not. I can never perhaps be the leader I want to be!

Or is it?

What if we have Leadership wrong?

Rather than try and pop various leadership pills, supplements and oils prescribed by pundits to enhance one’s leadership muscle, it may be time to realize that leadership may have nothing to do with what we ingest from the outside.

Leadership is all about the inside. Leadership is you, celebrating your uniqueness, by bringing out all the qualities you have to the fore, of course, for the good of society.

Leadership is optimizing who you are as a person…an inner journey of discovery, not an outer layering of other people’s expectations! If that were to be the case, Leadership is not a quest of what you don’t have, but a bringing forth of what you have already. It’s not about the many imperfections of leadership that others are ready to tell you about, instead, it’s bringing out one’s best despite those imperfections.

A Mandela, a Martin Luther King, a Mother Theresa, an Abe Lincoln did not go to any formal school on Leadership. Gates dropped out of college. Gandhi got kicked out of a train. Iacocca (R.I.P) was fired from Ford before he turned around Chrysler. Leadership happened to them when they each had an inner awakening of sorts. Each of them went through a deeper journey, often full of doubts and issues and strove to fight their own demons to serve and lead.

Leadership is the inner core in each of us, coming out with faith, strength, and courage. So, shouldn’t we all focus on going deep within to uncover, for ourselves, and for others, our inner core?

Maybe there is a piece of Mandela, or Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, Or a Bill Gates, or a Steve Jobs in each of us…. that I don’t know. But there is, in each of us, a special ‘me’…and that’s the best leader waiting to come out. You are your own inspiration for being a leader. Searching for it is the real quest of leadership.

So, what do you think? Is leadership, therefore an outward search for what you don’t have, or an inward discovery and expression of what you have?

Be honest, how much time you spend on the outward search as opposed to the inner reflection? Should we all change that?