Leadership everywhere...

Education can literally change lives of not only individuals but of whole families. I witnessed this myself with my family. Both of my grandfathers had very little education. One was a farmer, the other a truck driver. Both valued education a lot, so they not only made sure that all their kids went to primary and secondary school, but that almost all of their kids - in total 17 - went to university as well.

My parents were - due to their age - the first ones in their families to make it to university. After escaping their home country of Iran, it was education that helped them build a good life in Germany and create the environment for my sister and I to achieve what we have achieved so far.

For any society it is access to good education for the very young - and it starts with kindergarten - and access to good universities that determines the long-term health and balance in that society.

That does not mean that everyone needs to become a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, or an economist... I know there are many more subjects one can study. But it means that everyone should have access to good education both as a very young kid and later on in life, as education is the biggest accelerator towards living a good (upper) middle class life.

Countries such as Germany - or in general in the West - but also countries like China, India, South Korea, and many others have rightfully invested in education opportunities for their people. No matter what political system countries have, they realise that without education they won't be able to compete on a global scale.

I look at education in phases... the first phase, is to learn reading and writing. My grandfather from my mother's side had the opportunity to go to school until the end of year 6. This meant he could read and write. With that ability he had access to literature i.e. poems, stories, newspapers, etc. He could continue his own education.

My father's father, did not have that opportunity as a child. In order to be able to help his own kids with school, he went to evening school later in his life. He also finished year 6. Both of them had a lot more potential but not the opportunity.

It was even worse for my grandmothers. When they were kids, girls were not sent to school at all. And later on my mother's mom learned to read and that opened up a whole new world to her... the world of books.

The second phase of education, is the ability to learn a profession... be it medicine, law, engineering, teaching, etc. Being able to attend university based on a strong foundation in languages, maths, and natural and social sciences is maybe the biggest privilege people in many countries take for granted - especially in those countries where education is almost free.

This second phase, allows for the individual, their family, their community, and the whole society to grow. It allows for more interesting work, for better paid work, for more humane work, for more creative work, and it allows to create better opportunities for the next generation.

This leads me to the third phase, which I believe we need to foster: Leadership education.

For decades - maybe even longer - people have debated whether leadership is innate i.e. one is born with certain capabilities, or whether it can be learned. That debate has been settled... as with anything in life some people are more talented than others, but the most part of leadership is learned.

Leadership is probably the most important ingredient in any successful endeavour.

Be it winning the FIFA World Cup, creating amazing products, running a successful political campaign, or developing the school of the future... all of these can only be done well with great leadership in place.

But what is leadership? The Oxford Dictionary defines leadership as "The action of leading a group of people or an organisation." This makes leadership tangible as leadership is ultimately about ACTIONS and actions can be learned.

This definition also shows that leadership is independent from rank... one does not have to be a manager to act, take initiative, and lead a group of people.

More and more organisations realise that in today's time we need self-managed individuals and/or self-managed teams that can create customer value faster as they - this is the essential part of self-management - make faster and better decisions.

These faster and better decisions are driven by individuals and teams that have the strategic context or clarity (shared by senior leaders in the org), have the competence or capabilities needed to execute, and finally possess the courage to take decisions quickly in order to deliver value to customers.

A self-managed team is not a team without a manager. A self-managed team is a team where the team is the manager. The same applies to a self-managed individual contributor... there is a reason they are also referred to as managers of one.

For individuals and teams to become self-managed they need to be developed. Remember: leadership and management are rarely innate, they are learned.

Going forward, it is not enough for people to learn to read and write, it is not enough for people to learn a specific profession e.g. becoming a medical doctor... in order to address the big challenges that we - as humanity - are facing, we need everyone to learn "The action of leading a group of people or an organisation."

Is this idealistic? A few years ago, I would have said yes. But due to my work I get to see some really interesting organisations and I get to meet some really interesting people.

The other day, I was teaching a short session to a group of senior executives at one of my clients. For several of them it was the first encounter with the topic of Agile Leadership. At the end of the session, the session sponsor asked the others whether this session was valuable to them and whether other senior leaders should go through a similar session.

Their response: "This is not only valuable for senior leaders in our organisation, it is valuable for all leaders, and all employees. We need leadership everywhere!"

If we want leadership everywhere, we need to develop leadership within everyone. Is it going to be easy? No! But the easy stuff is not what gets me up excited every morning. It is the big challenges, that I want to contribute to solving.

If you have any questions around this topic or want to setup a holistic leadership development program fit for the challenges of our time, feel free to reach out. My team and I are more than happy to help you move forward.

As this is my last piece of writing for this year, I want to use the opportunity to wish you all the best for 2023. See you next year ;-)

Sohrab