Leadership seen as a process instead of a person
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Are leaders born or made? What defines good leadership? Important questions indeed.
But here’s a more important one: What even is leadership? Is it a person? Is it a trait? Maybe it’s a process!
Viewing leadership as a process instead of a person is empowering and liberating.
Are leaders born or made? What defines good leadership? Important questions indeed. But I’m convinced the most important and foundational question is: What even is leadership?
The lights started coming on for me during our first Leadership for Growth lecture. Nothing has ever transformed my outlook as dramatically and instantaneously as the diagram that Dr. Chiu put on the screen that day.
The slide compared the Trait and Process theories of leadership. Both acknowledge that people have traits that affect their interactions. But in Trait Theory leadership RESIDES in people. Here things like confidence, extroversion and even height matter a lot.
The average adult male in America is 175.4cm. I’m technically above average, coming in at a gargantuan 176cm. Good news for me seeing as 90% of CEOs are above average in height.
Following people simply because they are tall sounds like the height of stupidity. But its one of many unconscious biases that affect us all. That’s why I’m so excited to explore Process Theory where leadership is OBSERVED in people.
My new working definition is that leadership is a process by which people influence each other to accomplish an objective and direct the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.
The lights started coming on for me during our first Leadership for Growth lecture. Nothing has ever transformed my outlook as dramatically and instantaneously as the diagram that Dr. Chiu put on the screen that day.
The slide compared the Trait and Process theories of leadership. Both acknowledge that people have traits that affect their interactions. But in Trait Theory leadership RESIDES in people. Here things like confidence, extroversion and even height matter a lot.
The average adult male in America is 175.4cm. I’m technically above average, coming in at a gargantuan 176cm. Good news for me seeing as 90% of CEOs are above average in height.
Following people simply because they are tall sounds like the height of stupidity. But its one of many unconscious biases that affect us all. That’s why I’m so excited to explore Process Theory where leadership is OBSERVED in people.
My new working definition is that leadership is a process by which people influence each other to accomplish an objective and direct the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.