Friday, December 19, 2008

Leadership - Is it about a person or a process?

I believe that real leadership is not merely about a person, it is about the process that creates next generation of leaders. More I think about it the more I get convinced about it. Be it in a business organization, in sports or in a simple environs of a household.

Leaders are a great thing to happen, but leadership on the other hand is about a process and a phenomenon. Great leaders appear once in a while, awaken by the situation or inspired by their inner urge to take up a given cause or by their belief in their principles. But what is saddening is the fact that even these leaders achieve limited success in building a factory of developing leaders.

We admire leaders, even try to emulate them and some of us even think of developing second line of leaders with all sincerity. And that is all. We do not look beyond this point. We do not think of how can we make leadership development a key process in our organization.

We tell our people what is the time, also some of us teach them to read time, few of us give them watch to see time for themselves but practically none of us teach them how to fabricate watches, so that there are leaders every where and at every level in the organization.