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Leadership is all around us. We are both leaders and followers. There are formal leaders and informal leaders, transformational leaders and transitional leaders, roving leaders and facilitating leaders. Let’s look at an example of a leader in Benjamin Zander, Conductor.
Benjamin Zander - Conductor
Since 1979, Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. He is known around the world as both a guest conductor and a speaker on leadership -- and he's been known to do both in a single performance. Benjamin Zander has two infectious passions: classical music, and helping us all realize our untapped love for it -- and by extension, our untapped love for all new possibilities, new experiences, new connections.
Benjamin Zander realized at the age of 45 - after conducting orchestras for 20 years - that “the conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. And that changed everything for me.
My job was to awaken the possibility in other people.
~ Benjamin Zander
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It was totally life changing. My job was to awaken the possibility in other people. And I wanted to know whether I was doing that. You know how you find it? You look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining you know you are doing it. If they are not shining, you have to ask yourself a question: Who am I being that my players’ eyes are not shining?”
Benjamin Zander’s definition of success is how many shining eyes he has around him. Here is the link to his 20-minute presentation on music and passion. The above quote begins at 17:25 of the presentation, which you can see here.
Effective Leadership
In Lead to Succeed, Rick Pitino writes: "Good leaders take away the doubt and uncertainty, the fear of the future. Good leaders provide an environment in which other people can grow. Good leaders instill values. Good leaders make the people around them more successful."
There is more than one model or style of effective leadership. Different approaches work in different situations. Good leaders provide what their followers need. Leadership can be any opportunity to take action. Exercising effective leadership is a way to fulfill your personal potential and bring about change.
Inclusive leadership tends to favour collaborative or collegial approaches – connecting, sharing information and power, fostering relationships, and empowering colleagues. This model of leadership is very effective in working groups, committee work and working with volunteers (i.e. participants are not being paid by the organization for their level of engagement).
In Escape from Oz: Leadership for the 21st Century, Jeanne Martinson describes four elements essential for effective leadership:
•insight, or the ability to identify needs and recognize possibilities, to envision the future and embrace change;
•courage – to take initiative and take risks and take responsibility, to accept criticism and share power;
•self-discipline – to be persistent, organized, focused, and ethical; and
•ability to influence people, to communicate and motivate and inspire others to work for a goal, to encourage others to succeed.
Leaders also need to have the trust of their followers. Jeanne calls trust “the glue of leadership”, because followers must have confidence in the competence and integrity of the leader.
Leaders, Not Managers
Much of the existing leadership training is focused on improving productivity within a business and focuses on the bottom line.
Managers learn through training. Leaders opt for education.
Aspiring leaders must also think non-traditionally.
~ Warren Bennis
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In On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis writes: "The list on the left is of all the qualities that business schools don’t encourage enough, as they too often opt for the short-run, profit-maximizing, microeconomic bottom line. Bottom lines have nothing to do with problem-finding. And we need people who know how to find problems, because the ones we face today aren’t always clearly defined, and they aren’t linear.”
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