There are many insights about leadership. What is leadership at its core?
According to Wipikedia is this:
What Wipikedia describes here is that there is usually a relationship between leadership and a position. In other words leadership is hung up on a position in a work environment or a place where a group of people are active and where the group is influenced by the leader,. In my opinion, this is a meager reflection of what leadership actually means. Because the question is to what extent you as a person are able to influence the other. Do you know what to do to influence the other person?
In his book “the seven traits of effective leadership” Stephan Covey discusses personal leadership at length. In summary, it is first about yourself and leading yourself before getting to the second stage of leading others. Covey writes that it is possible to appeal to our self-awareness, imagination and conscience. By focusing on these and making changes, we are only able to expand our circle of influence. In other words, that is leading ourselves.
Leadership begins with ourselves.
An example to clarify what is meant by this. Suppose you are married. With you and your partner the sparks are no longer flying and you want to change that for the better? So you start a conversation together. That is wise but there is a chance that the conversation will not achieve what you have in mind. When you start looking at the situation from your self-awareness, you can regain a grip on the situation. You start to imagine how you would like the relationship to go. And in doing so, you imagine how your partner reacts to certain things. In doing so, you can go so far as to form an image of what you would say or do. All aimed at getting the other person to change the atmosphere in a positive way. Now that you know this from your imagination, you can decide to make the necessary change in yourself. The impact on yourself and the change you make will become noticeable in the other person.
The impact on yourself and the change you make will become noticeable in others.
So leadership begins with ourselves. If we want to lead another person somewhere, we ourselves will have to have a picture of what steps we need to take to get to where we want to get out. In essence, you see that which the others do not yet see. For some, it is enough when as a leader you tell them the end goal. The listeners are independently able to reach that goal. For others, you start with Step 1 and lay out the path step by step before you get to the end goal. Sometimes you tell what is needed and other times you can create movement by asking the right questions. As a leader, you can envision what you yourself need to do or what personal change you need to make before you can influence others. That is leadership from the bottom up!
