What is Leadership?

What does that mean, leadership? It’s a big word, kind of hard to describe, like love.

Like love, leadership is a feeling, an urge, an inspiration. And like love, leadership only counts when you take responsibility for your urge and act on it. That act is just the beginning of a journey, because like love, leadership isn’t a single act, it is a way of life.

Leadership is continuing to take responsibility by being present to the impact of your action. Then reflecting, is this the outcome I intended?  Sometimes the impact is not at all what you intended. This is where responsibility kicks in because now you have the humbling work of leadership to do:

·         forgive yourself,

·         learn from your mistakes,

·         celebrate your courage to make the mistakes,

·         be grateful for the gifts of the experience,

·         ask for the forgiveness of others,

·         do what you can to make it right,

·         reconnect with your inspiration,

·         and put yourself out there again.

This last step is harder than it sounds.  Especially, after many mistakes or big mistakes.  Why?  Well I don’t know about you, but for me sometimes I come up against a wall. That wall is myself, my doubt, my lack of confidence, my insignificance, my fear, my inadequacy, my exhaustion, (the list goes on, as you may have experienced at one time or another).

This is why true leadership is so inspiring, because it requires vulnerability and intimacy. It requires me to risk being fully who I am (including my failings) for the sake of something bigger and more important than me alone.

I must allow myself to be touched, moved and inspired, to feel the sadness and the hurt, to feel the hope and inspiration, to be present and be a part of it ... all of it, including the mess of it.  This is humanity.  This is love.  This is leadership.