How our expectations of leadership will determine its future
Sometimes people get into leadership for the wrong reasons: they wanted a title, a pay bump, a higher rank — sometimes they end up in leadership roles by accident, because no one else wanted the job, or they were the ‘most senior’ or ‘most qualified’ person available. Many of us have worked with these types of leaders and probably sworn that if we ever find ourselves in a similar position we will definitely not be like them. But what were they like, and why was that so disappointing to us and/or destructive to our teams?
If we can answer this question, we stand a much better chance of getting, or becoming, the leaders we want to work with in the future — because just creating more leaders will not help us achieve our goals, but creating more great leaders will.
What follow are four things we expect leaders to be, but often just aren’t.