<< Back To Leadership Unlimited Archive

August 2004

Want To Improve Leadership?  Try Leadership Unlimited

Welcome to the first edition of Leadership Unlimited, my monthly electronic Column devoted to leadership, and how you can improve your own leadership to improve your quality of life. 

Although our primary topic is leadership, we’ll cover a lot of other issues as well.  You see, leadership touches on so many other topics that it’s almost unlimited. 

More and more I’ve come to see that success, whether in business, the community, or your personal life, is a function of leadership, or some aspect of leadership.  And, of course, the opposite is true as well, that failure often seems to be a function of lack of leadership.

And one of the goals of this Column is to help you unleash the leader within.  I believe that we all have lots of leadership ability, locked deep inside, just waiting to be unleashed. 

For most of us, our capacity to improve our leadership ability is also virtually unlimited.  Leadership is a lot like athletic ability—some people are born with a lot of athletic ability, and others are born with less (and I was born with a lot less!). 

It’s the same with leadership ability, but no matter where you are on the leadership spectrum, you can learn to improve, just as you can learn to improve your athleticism. 

And, I hope that this brief, monthly Column will give you specific things to think about and do, as you strive to improve some aspect of your leadership ability.

My definition of leadership is pretty simple:  it’s the ability to influence people to do things they might not otherwise do without a leader to guide them. 

I realize this is a broad definition, but I believe that everyone, no matter what your job title or position, is in a leadership role, because you are always trying to lead others or yourself.  You’re trying to influence others in your family, or your civic group, or the team on which you serve at work. 

That, by my definition is leadership.

Even if you’re stuck on a desert island somewhere (well, at least your wireless connection is working!), you’re leading yourself.  I mean that you’re trying to have the discipline to figure out what needs to be done, prioritize those things, and then go out and do them. 

That’s what I call internal leadership.  And, in most case, we can’t be effective at leading others (external leadership) unless we’re effective at leading ourselves. 

If you accept this definition, then you’ll understand why I like to say, “Leadership is EVERYONE’S business.”  So, one thing to keep in mind is that when I talk of leadership, it’s not geared only to those who are in official leadership positions. 

As I said, there are a lot of aspects to leadership:  public speaking, emotional intelligence, working on a team, customer service, selling your ideas (or products) to others—the list goes on and on!  So we’ll have plenty of topics to address. 

And as much as possible, I want this Column to be driven by readers like you.  All you have to do is email me at terry@tgwall.com with an idea or an aspect of leadership that interests you, and I will try to address it in a future edition. 

It could be a question about leadership style, or a comment on a particular situation, or maybe you just want my perspective on something that’s related to leadership.  Let me know, and I’ll do my best to cover it.

So, we’ll have plenty to talk about in the vast, unlimited field of leadership.  One important part of leadership is that we must take responsibility for what we do, including making the necessary changes to improve our leadership. 

Change is never easy, and the changes we make along the way won’t be easy.  (Managing change, now that I think of it, is another element of leadership.)

To paraphrase Charles Darwin, “The species that survives isn’t necessarily the strongest species.  And it’s not necessarily the smartest.  The species that survives is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

With that in mind, here are some questions for you to ponder.  What aspect of leadership do you need to work on?  How might lack of improvement in that area be holding you back?  What steps must you take to make improvements? 

In future editions, I hope to give you specific guidelines that help you address questions like these.  That wraps up this edition of Leadership Unlimited.  Until the next edition, the middle of next month, keep leading!

Copyright (C) 2004 by Terry Wall

<< Back To Leadership Unlimited Archive