Leadership - A definition that works well for me.

Leadership is one of those topics with an almost bottomless pit of resources describing it. Despite this, a useful working definition can sometimes feel a little hard to pin down in practical terms. This morning, as I was doing my daily journaling exercise to start the day the following flowed forth. I thought it might be worth sharing as I travel on my own messy journey as a leader. Let me know what you think.

Leadership is:

The daily ritual of positively influencing those around you such that they can achieve their latent potential over the course of each day, week, month, year and lifetime.

You achieve this by: 1. Mastering your emotions - particularly fear and anger. 2. Applying good judgement - having the serenity to know what you can fix, the courage to know what you cannot and the wisdom to know one from the other. 3. Starting now and seeing every occurrence as a chance to develop better outcomes by practicing the first two things.

This will take: A lifetime of practice and dedication - kings are born, managers are appointed, good leaders work at it every second.

Your reward: The fulfilment and serenity that comes from seeing your world change positively as result of reciprocity when you positively change the world of others.

If you are interested in a conversation about how you might become a better leader then read more here.

PS - You may be wondering what on earth the bowl of fruit is all about. Simply, that it is not possible to find an image that represents leadership that isn't some trite, vomit inducing b*llocks. So I chose a bowl of fruit instead. Now you know. ;-)