Why becoming a leader? What does it take to become a leader? What’s leadership anyway? Is it attainable by anybody? Is there actionable guidance to become a leader?
I found the answers to almost all the questions in Gerald M. Weinberg book - Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach.
My favorite is how he defines leadership.
Leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered. – Gerald M. Weinberg.
I found out that this definition can be easily applied not only to technical leadership but to any kind of leadership.
Family
Are you creating an environment in which your kids and your partner become empowered?
- Is your home a place where your family members long to be? Or each one seeks a reason to sneak outside if it?
- Are your kids passionately share their experiences they had in kindergarten or in the school? Or when you ask “How was your day?” you hear just “Fine”?
- Is you partner shares her deepest feelings, thoughts on life and work. Do you discuss a deeper meaning and then make love? Or you have transactional conversations and actions that sometimes concluded by just sex?
Work
Are you creating an environment in which your colleagues, managers, reports become empowered?
- Do you like coming to your work? Why?
- Do you like your office? Why?
- Do you like your colleagues? Why?
- Do your colleagues like you? Why?
- Are you writing emotionally intelligent emails that build rapport?
- Did you receive “Thank you!” email privately lately?
- Did you send “Thank you!” email privately lately?
- Are you genuinely interested in listening to what you colleague has to say?
- What’s your “street creds”?
- What nickname your co-workers gave you?
- What significant change you drove lately? How many followed?
- Are you “go-to” person for any subject of your interest/expertise?
Blogging
Are you creating an environment in which your blogofriends (real and virtual) become empowered?
- Are you commenting on other underdog blogs?
- Do your comments encourage discussion or are they self centric and self promotional?
- Are you giving link love?
- How many comments you get?
- Do you get link love back?
- Do you have loyal readers? How do you know?
- Did you get recently emails from your blogofriends asking for advice or help?
Self
Are you creating an environment in which you become empowered?
- Do you carve time for your life projects?
- Do you give priorities to do what you passionate about?
- Can you quickly list your goals?
- Can you quickly list your latest achievements in life and work?
Footnote
Becoming a leader looks actionable and attainable to me. I think you can easily become a leader. It is all about developing skills of creating environment that empowers people.
Mr. Universe doesn’t have more muscles than I do, just better developed ones. – Gerald M. Weinberg.
12 comments ↓
Alik, very much enjoyed this post and wanted to thank you for the link love. It is very much appreciated. Keep up the good work, and here’s to your success!
Hi Alik: I like that definition of leadership - empowering other people. Thank for the link love!
I really like Weinberg’s definition. It’s easy to think that being a leader means being “the boss,” but it’s also about being a facilitator and a supporter. Are there any actions or characteristics that preclude a person from being a leader? I’d love to know what others think…
Joel,
Great to hear you liked it! Happy to strengthen our blogofriendship
Marelisa,
See, everybody can be a leader.
Sara,
Leadership is not same as management. Look for Leadership in wikipedia - they have good distinction between the two.
Also, review this for lessons on leadership from John Wooden:
http://practicethis.com/2008/06/06/john-woodens-12-lessons-in-leadership-for-kids/
Thanks Alik!
Initially I though that I have no interest in leadership, but you are right: leadership pertains to family, blogging and life in general. Interesting post!
Vered,
Thank you for being such a great reader! You empower me to blog thus you are my leader. No joke.
Alik,
I really like the way you have broadened the application of my definition of leadership to all the important areas of a person’s life. Although most of my work is with technical leaders, I, too, have a life. I never quite thought of it this way before, but I try to be a leader in my family and particularly of myself. Sometimes, though, I forget about empowering myself. Thank you for this terrific reminder–which, of course, makes you a leader.
Jerry,
I am software performance and security consultant on my quest to reverse engineer (broaden) professional practices back into “real” life.
I see almost 100% match.
BTW, just finished your “Weinberg on writing - the fieldstone method”. See how I implement your advices? I’ve just stolen your stone in this post ;).
The other funny thing is that collecting “stones” is something I do too, here is how I collect gold nuggets with RSS:
http://blogs.msdn.com/alikl/archive/2007/05/13/how-to-use-outlook-2007-rss-to-effectively-aggregate-and-distill-information.aspx
There are few more techniques to collect the gold nuggets into “piles”. I sure must craft a post on that one.
Thank you for your practical books!
Alik -
Thanks for the link love. You have uncanny ability to reward your blogger buddies with grace and valuable content. Your questions always makes me ponder.
I love it.
Shilpan
Shilpan,
>>”Your questions always makes me ponder.”
It is one of the biggest rewards for me.
[…] The new Leadership Development Carnival #1 is up and running at Great Leadership, hosted by Dan McCarthy. This month’s Carnival is presenting a leadership development advice and commentary from over 30 leadership blogs, including my own article, Is Becoming A Leader Actionable And Attainable For All?. […]
Alik,
Great post. You’ve shown me I have much work to do on multiple fronts. Looking forward to picking up a copy of Weinberg’s book.
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