LEADERSHIP IS A LEARNED SKILL

Consider the brilliant technician. A technician is anyone with a deep skill set in a particular competency area. It’s the talent you’re known for; the expertise you’ve acquired; the craft you’ve spent 10,000+ hrs refining.  It could be architecture, engineering, accounting, marketing, management consulting, sales, research, or retailing (just to name a few).

Then, make that brilliant technician responsible for leading a team of similarly talented technicians.  Does being a great technician immediately qualify you for the role of leadership?

The answer is NO! Of course not.

So my 10,000 hours happens to be in teaching leaders across every industry and at every level, the skills they need to elevate performance and achieve results through others.

Want to know more?

Join me at 1.30pm next Wednesday 8 September for a free online keynote event – INSPIRE HIGH PERFORMANCE – with the amazing Ainslie van Onselen, Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.

INSPIRE HIGH PERFORMANCE: Discover what leaders do to inspire high performance and connect people to purpose

Date: Wednesday 8 September, 2021

Time: 1.30pm-2.30pm

Special guest: Ainslie van Onselen, Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.

Register here and receive a copy of my highly acclaimed book Purpose, Passion and Performance: Register now for Inspire High Performance

So back to my musings…Leadership is a learned skill, second in difficulty only to raising children!

Just because we were once a child, doesn’t automatically mean we will be great parents. Just because we’ve been students, doesn’t automatically qualify us for teaching (a hard truth that all home-schooling parents quickly realised!). Similarly, just because we’ve been led, doesn’t automatically mean we will make great leaders.

Many, many leaders are promoted to their position because they are great technical specialists and they’re given people to add more value. They realise quickly they are ill-equipped to manage complex people dynamics and hardly want to admit it, well, because it’s shameful to be promoted into a leadership role and not look like you know what you’re doing!

In my book, Purpose, Passion & Performance, I talk about leadership as a system of behaviours – a series of deceptively simple behavioural codes for unlocking performance through leadership. It involves:

  • Inspiring the team to meet aspirational goals through setting clear standards for performance and behaviour
  • Driving accountability and transparency – through normalising a culture of feedback
  • Continuously developing capability – through coaching and leveraging strengths.

 

I call it The Leadership System. When leaders continually set standards, normalise feedback, and coach strengths, they enable their people to quickly move through cycles of growth and amplify performance in structured and supported ways.

We are not magically born with these behavioural codes downloaded – we must learn them.

So if you haven’t mastered the art of leadership, don’t beat yourself up. Recognise where you are and commit to learning the skills that will elevate your impact.

Register here and receive a copy of my highly acclaimed book Purpose, Passion and Performance: Register now for Inspire High Performance

 

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