The Spirit of Leadership

Leadership is a process of social influence in which one person enlists the help and support of others toward a common goal. Formal authority may or may not be part of it. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”

A manager protects stability; a leader brings change. A manager makes rules; a leader breaks them. A manager takes credit; a leader gives it away. We go through all ten, and then find which of them describes your own working week.

Believe — firm belief in yourself and in your team. Encourage — help the people around you find what they are capable of. Challenge — refuse to stand still, and refuse to let them. Correct — repair the mistake without breaking the person.

Three things kill a relationship: compromise, comparison and compliance. Negotiate instead of conceding; mind your own work instead of measuring it against someone else's; ask what actually works instead of simply going along.

The lion is not the largest, heaviest or cleverest animal in the jungle, yet it is king. Seeing an elephant, the lion thinks “lunch”; seeing the lion, the elephant thinks “fear”. The difference is not size but attitude — and attitude is a product of belief.

Three things decide how far your leadership grows: how you see yourself, why you think you exist, and your sense of your own significance. Until the belief changes, the potential stays a hostage of it.

Leadership is inherent in the human spirit; it cannot be taught, only discovered; it is self-discovery; it is service offered to the world; it is self-deployment rather than employment; it is self-manifestation; it is self-expenditure. Two worked historical examples close the course: Khalid bin Walid and Salahuddin al-Ayyubi.