Leadership, is it a perception or an inception?

The endless talks, debates, and even theories about leadership will never cease, yet, it is getting more complicated with no specific clue or even set of clues. Every time and so, new concepts with sophisticated quadrants, matrixes, and triangles stuffed in books, email shots, and maybe institutes make our ability to choose among them a daunting mission.

We know that great leaders were not born as leaders, we also may know through their biographies that they became leaders for different reasons. Most of these reasons can make a good movie that will make us shed tears and keep watching it several times. Yet, we do not know the recipe, because there is no recipe.  We know that there is always something common among those great leaders, but this does not act as a yard stick or a benchmark for normal people like you and me.

Without adding more mystery and suspense to our talk, the leaders are mostly perceived as leaders due to their effect on those who are led by them. And since perception is reality, we cannot create leaders based on others’ perceptions as possibilities will be infinite. To make the point clear, we should look at the other side of the leadership paradox, which is what created the leaders. !!!!!

Most of great leaders’ biographies, if not all, there is always someone who has been behind the great success of that leader. Someone who was mostly simple and modest but succeeded in inspiring that great leader. This inspiration as we all know is not a direct and forceful communication, it is rather indirect and gentle. The wisdom of leadership was incepted in their minds through stories and tales that their influencers kept telling them without a clear intention for turning them into leaders. Thus, leadership started to stem from inside out and grow by the force of inception not perception.