It is a fact that all leaders don’t have the same style, simply due to behavior variations between people. But what is the concept and true definition of a leader? And how can we truly define leadership? Marketing Leader & Business Transformation Specialist, Tiana Homsani gives us her insights on this very important subject:
“There are days I catch myself thinking about the various styles of people and leaders who crossed my life. Some of them were so amazing that I could work for them for free, at any time (maybe I need to tell them this…). Some served me as a source of inspiration, at work and in life, becoming good friends. Some were examples of frustration and disappointment, but they touched me what not to do. Others were called leaders when they were nothing else but old-school-control-freak managers. Few others…I don’t even remember their names.”
According to Dr. Google, there are over 4.4 billion definitions of leadership, which clearly shows an explosion of concepts and a continual creation of new constructs and notions about leadership resulting in considerable confusion and (maybe) driving non-appropriate behaviors.
Tiana continues, “I would base my assumptions on personal experience, I would say leadership is not related to hierarchy (senior executives and senior leaders have, by definition, different meaning), nor to title, or to management. True leadership is the responsibility of anyone with or without hierarchy or formal level of authority.”
If leadership is the capacity to influence others towards a common goal, what if we call it leader-ship as the ability to lead a team of people who decided to join you in a cruise journey? Sometimes they will go with you through turbulent waters, and other times just cruising calm waters on a sunny day with a feeling of fulfillment and happiness. But remember, “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor” (Franklin D. Roosevelt). Being skilled means how well you are prepared to deal with each of those situations, leading as you would like to be led and understanding people’s drivers while respecting their differences.
At the end life is like the ocean. It can be calm or turbulent, and when leaders succeed, it is because they have learned a few basic lessons: People are complex, each person is unique and driven by different purposes and by understanding this, they are able to build trust with empathy. To earn trust, leaders must extend trust.
Tiana concludes “So ask yourself: how many people would like to board your leader-ship? And what about you, would you board in your own leader-ship?
Think about it and let us all be the leaders we would like to be led by.”Link to Tiana’s LinkedIn Profile
