Frustrated/Stifled Leadership Potential ... Our duty of care!

by Administrator 08.Jul.2011 07:54:00

If a true leader is someone who has the ability to identify requirement, the courage to proactively engage & the smarts to formulate a workable solution, logically this person would automatically be, to varying degrees, at odds with the status quo and those who are content to go with the flow.

The key to meeting this challenge, as we know, is the ability to persuade, sell, influence and negotiate in order to overcome inherent resistance to change. Yet in the course of almost 2 decades of Leadership Training, Coaching & Consulting, I find it is this particular attribute that oftentimes frustrates real leadership deployment.  Innovative, different or exceptional thinking is, in the nature of things, in direct conflict with the beliefs, expectations, hopes and even the morality of the majority. How often are brilliant ideas ignored in favour of more digestible “what we know works” solutions?

We should perhaps take care to protect exceptional thinkers, starting in the classroom, from the exclusion that drives them into perceived/real isolation and eventual bitterness that might be carried over into adulthood. This is especially important in an age where technology (social media, information processing/distribution) is so rapidly becoming an end in itself, in many instances, eclipsing the desire for depth, context and originality. 

Consider the words of Christopher Sykes in discussing the formative years of Orde Wingate, the iconoclastic WW2 hero whose life struggle was to sell his brilliance to unwilling colleagues: 

“A child knows nothing of the pains of growth. Only that he is in pain… the unformed mind has no notion of the frustration endured by oncoming talent; it cannot possibly endure the elaborate inner process whereby instinctive resentment is brought into being against the neglect and arrogance of ordinary people; it can only feel the bitterness of exclusion.”

For those of us involved in corporate mentorship, guidance programs and professional development, not to speak of executives and management teams responsible for forward planning, is it not in our business interest to acknowledge and, wherever possible, accommodate the leadership potential of original thinkers?  



Recent Posts

    {#advanced_dlg.about_title}
  • {#advanced_dlg.about_title}
  • {#advanced_dlg.about_title}
  • {#advanced_dlg.about_title}

Youth Mentorship

Harding on Body Language

Random Posts

QR Code

Harding International and Associates Inc QR Code