How does one prepare for leadership? Effective leadership takes experience, reflection, practice, and wisdom acquired over time and circumstance. Learning to lead is a lifelong process. Human diversity, the infinite variety of leadership opportunities, and the social nature of leadership make it impossible to define any one learning path that guarantees the full range of competencies and understandings leaders need. Individual leaders bring their own skills, personalities, capacities, and limitations that add unique twists and turns to the learning journey. What prepares us best to seize the opportunity and lead? In the face of all this ambiguity, where do we begin?
An important first step is to accept that preparation for leadership is developmental. Like good wine, leadership skills and savvy mature over time and under appropriate conditions. Leaders expand their capacities through experiences and self-reflection—opportunities to consolidate strengths and identify areas for development. The accumulated wisdom enriches a leader’s understanding of self, others, and the larger world. Persistence and a commitment to ongoing learning encourage leaders to embrace a holistic approach to readying themselves and to fully appreciate everyday actions and choices as precious opportunities to practice basic skills and develop leadership discipline. More important, a developmental perspective encourages the patience and self-forgiveness essential to the learning process. The authors in Part Two of this volume provide suggestions and strategies for individuals on the road to leadership success.
In Chapter Six, “The Seven Ages of the Leader,” leadership sage Warren G. Bennis reminds us that Shakespeare got it right about life—and about leadership education. We all have a lifetime to mature fully into our role, and wisdom comes from embracing tasks and opportunities at different life stages. Leaders across the career-span take heed, suggests Bennis. Untested leaders—find a mentor and support system. Practicing neophytes—learn about the public face of leadership. Developing leaders and those rapidly rising to the top—respect the human side of enterprise. Acknowledged leaders—remember the full power and responsibility of the leadership mantle. Seasoned veterans—rein in your ego, share what you have learned, and recapture childlike joy in your efforts.
Knowing what to expect and how to learn from key experiences is important. Understanding the talents that you bring and that will sustain you in your leadership travels is equally vital. Required tasks that don’t tap an individual’s skills are drudgery; soul-renewing contributions that use the best of what an individual has to offer are a joy. In Chapter Seven, “The Traces of Talent,” Marcus Buckingham and the late Donald O. Clifton provide strategies for leaders to reflect honestly on their true gifts. Monitoring one’s spontaneous reactions, yearnings, areas of rapid learning, and satisfying choices reveals important clues, suggest the authors. High-level contributions require a clear sense of self and a good fit between the leader’s talents and the demands of the situation.
Learning to lead is not about developing a textbook persona or fancy image. It is a process of understanding oneself—natural talents and flat sides—and knowing how to build a leadership approach that is consistent with one’s character and abilities yet flexible enough to respond to the changing needs of the situation. In Chapter Eight, “Leadership Is Authenticity, Not Style,” Harvard Business School professor and former head of Medtronic, Bill George, gives an honest account of what authenticity means for new and seasoned leaders. He talks openly about the pressures for performance, profits, and perfection that can challenge even the most values-centered leaders, and reminds all that effective leadership is really about service, caring, openness, empowering others, and contribution.
The final three chapters in Part Two outline activities that build leadership discipline. They are the practices of the mind and heart that open leaders to creativity, innovation, and extraordinary contribution, and that prepare them for the challenges ahead. In Chapter Nine, “Thinking Gray and Free,” Steven B. Sample, the successful, long-serving president of the University of Southern California, identifies two key requirements for leadership: intellectual independence and creativity. Sample believes that leaders can deepen their capacities for both with practice. He proposes two developmental activities for leaders: thinking gray—strategies to avoid natural inclinations for binary, right-wrong judgments in the face of complexity—and thinking free—ways to stretch individual and collective cognition beyond the tight constraints and fears that usually rule our thinking.
In Chapter Ten, “Enhancing the Psycho-Spiritual Development of Leaders: Lessons from Leadership Journeys in Asia,” Philip H. Mirvis and Karen Ayas illustrate a paradox in great leadership. Leadership is deeply personal, rooted in the mind and heart of the leader. At the same time, business leaders are most powerful when they acknowledge their shared humanity, connect strongly to others, and work to elevate the quality of life for their customers and communities. Mirvis and Ayas draw on their experiences with leading learning journeys for global leaders. They show how deep connections to indigenous people and persons in need, encounters with nature, opportunities for community service, and reflection on these experiences develop essential leadership understandings and practices.
Finally, in Chapter Eleven, Robert E. Quinn teaches leaders how to stay anchored in their convictions, true to core values, centered on the larger purpose of their contribution, and open to learning in “Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership.” Quinn’s research found that, ironically, leaders who are most true to their authentic selves are also in a state markedly different from their usual state of being when they lead. These individuals enter what Quinn calls a fundamental state of leadership, and they attract others to their cause and purpose through a passionate focus on results, internal drive, commitment to others, and deep openness to information and the external world. Quinn provides simple questions individuals can use to get into the fundamental state of leadership and asserts that regular use of these questions prepares leaders for the opportunities ahead.