I had a great chat with a colleague today about what we mean by the term leadership. Well, lots of erudite writing exists about transactional, transformational, buffered, distributed leadership ..... and much much more. She asked me what I see is the key aspects of leadership and I trotted out some of the usual trite stuff about shared vision and so on. I also remembered something a colleague once said to me about delegating responsibility rather than just delegating tasks. Does that make you a leader ... or the person to whom you are delegating? Does helping to build leadership in others make you a leader?
I started to wonder if we need a new word. So much has been written about the differences between management and leadership. Are we entering a phase where we need to acknowledge that there are overlaps and ermm outerlaps?
Later in the day, she asked me if I had planned my career and I had to admit that I had not. I talked her through my life story (well she did ask) and was struck by her response: "so you've never said no to an opportunity?" I admitted there was one major opportunity I had turned down but broadly agreed with her assessment.
I believe that I've been lucky, blessed even.
Is leadership 'letting go' of management? I think it is certainly letting go of micro-management. Leadership from within a team is an interesting concept that is currently exercising my sociological imagination.
My colleague came up with the idea of chats recorded on video and saved on our VLE. Perhaps we should start some panel chats .... has anyone done this? I'd love to hear about it ...
this also appears on reflog
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