Leaders vs. Leadership
Leaders vs. Leadership
We all have hopefully, at some point in the year, begun to understand that being a leader is not just a one dimensional role.
Leaders have a duty: to create and foster effective leadership in the respective community they serve or are working for.
One way of looking at what effective leadership looks like is through examples we can relate to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEJaz3sinEs
That is one way of helping create an effective environment of leadership. What a formal leader can do at the beginning is start the forming and understanding of the group. During the storming stage, problems are addressed and put out into the open. Storming is often a hard stage of group development to get through, often because problems can always arise and group members don’t attempt to look for solutions. But when those problems are addressed and the group is able to find consensus on solutions, the forming stage starts and members of the group/community feel more in tune with leadership instead of the one or two leaders present. Thus, the role of the leader is given to all the members of the community who have thus been empowered. This leads to the final stage, in which everyone plays a role in community building and empowerment. The one distinct change between the forming stage and performing stage is the definition of leader changes from one person who is in “charge” to everyone being empowered and contributing. Thus leadership becomes an environment in which everyone is a leader and plays a significant supportive role in the group and there is a clear cohesion.
That is effective leadership and that helps create an ongoing change that could be very beneficial not only for the group dynamic but also for the community the group serves.