Not sure where to start in your Leadership Development?

There is great confusion over the subjects of Leadership and Leadership Development. Leadership is one very important subject that has puzzled humanity for centuries. Despite the many kinds of research and studies on the subject, Leadership will continue to remain a great puzzle for many.

Leadership is that subject which almost every individual seems to know about and appears to have an idea about who a Leader is and how he or she is supposed to go about Leadership yet ask same persons to give examples of leaders they know, only a few comes to their minds.

What does that show about leadership development?

We have so many studying about leadership yet few becoming leaders. Leadership has continued to be scarce. In fact, we could say, it is the greatest challenge of modern society. Funnily, as elitist as Leadership may sound it is one vocation that is open to just anyone.

And that is where it becomes even more interesting in leadership development…

While leadership is open to just anyone, no one could just become a Leader. There is a “becoming” for anyone and everyone desiring to be a Leader. This “becoming” is known as Leadership Development. And it takes a great deal to go through this process of leadership development.

This explains why many persons choose not to bother themselves about the process of Leadership development. To them, the price of Leadership development is so much that they can not pay them. But, unknown to these persons, the price of not developing one’s leadership is higher and costlier than the price one could pay for it.

You may wonder what one stands to gain by investing in his or her leadership, or you may be among the many who still see the price of leadership as being too costly or too much for them.

I wish to show you a simple way out of it and this simple way I found it in the Holy Bible,  Genesis 13:14

And the Lord said unto Abraham after that Lot was separated from him, lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward…

God told the Patriarch, Abraham, in this verse to begin from where he was. You may be a Christian and have often read that verse but here is a perspective to it. Abraham was told for him to possess the places he has been promised he had to begin from where he was at that moment.

As simple as that is or as absurd it may appear, the challenge of many in their personal growth or in their leadership is that they often want to jump the process of “becoming” (I referred to this earlier). Ask an average person out there, he or she wants to be that one leader that does not make a mistake, perfect and successful in everything.

But, is there any leader who does not make mistakes?

The answer is No!

John C. Maxwell painted a clear picture of this in Law 3 of his 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The Law of Process as he refers to it emphasises the development nature of leadership. According to him:

Leadership develops daily, not in a day.

In this chapter, he refers to a study by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus conducted on ninety top leaders drawn from different fields. In the study, they made an interesting discovery that “it is the capacity to develop and improve their skills that distinguish leaders from their followers.”

There you have, becoming an effective leader takes a process. Take, for instance, climbing a ladder, do you place the ladder on the ground and jump up, skipping rungs or do you climb the rungs gradually to the top? The same applies to Leadership. You don’t jump the process of “becoming”, you must go through it. There are several phases towards “becoming” a leader, none can be skipped. If you are one that does not like to make mistakes or does not like following the process of leadership development, you may have challenges in leadership. This is because

successful leaders are learners. And the learning process is ongoing, a result of self-discipline and perseverance. The goal each day must be to get a little better, to build on the previous day’s progress.

John C. Maxwell (The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership)

You must be ready to start from where you are!

Do not allow the whole process towards becoming a leader becloud or frighten you. Just start from where you are and gradually every other thing will be taken care of.

The question now is, “where are you in your Leadership Development?”

To help you further appreciate the need for process in your leadership development and to answer the question of where you are in your leadership, read this post on John Maxwell’s five phases of leadership development.