How do you know when you are leading and not managing?
Posted on March 20, 2013 by Bonnie Flatt, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Are you a leader or a manager?
I recently completed intensive training in a course called Tribal Leadership (check it out at culturesync.net). Tribal leadership is about how you are as a leader and the environment that you create for people to step into their leadership. Tribal leaders have the ability to listen others into their leadership. We spent a significant amount of time distinguishing between management and leadership.
Here are some ideas to think about:
1. Leadership is opening the door to greatness. You know you are leading when people see what is possible and step into that possibility.
2. Leadership is about relationships. A leader is present to both the quality of the relationship and the magnificence of the other. You can feel it as energy and connectivity when leadership is present. For me, it feels like a taut violin string that when plucked, makes beautiful music.
3. Leadership is about accountability. That is, the leader is accountable for bringing the impossible into existence.
So how do leaders do this? I believe that leaders lead from within. They do so by being authentically interested in what people are about, their values and what they bring to the party. By creating that environment, a leader will empower others to be effective through their own leadership, by creating collaborative peer to peer relationships.
The best way to create that environment is to first connect to your own leadership. To do that you need to connect to your authentic self, your values and your purpose. That is, to understand and connect to the core within you.
