Leaders Are Like...

In This Bloutcher
Where Art, Life and Leadership Collide

• Leaders Are Like...Still Lifes;  No Two Are Alike
• The Tailor's Daughter
• Live Smart After 50! The Experts' Guide to Life Planning for Uncertain Times
• Welcome into the World:  Hannah Rose 

Leaders Are Like...Still Lifes; No Two Are Alike

There's a lot of research and training out there that goes under the label of leadership development.  These include graduate schools, consultancies and business academies.  Most of these efforts focus on common systems, processes and techniques.  For instance, systems thinking, situational leadership, communication techniques, as examples.  These are interesting and often useful offerings.  But they miss the heart of leadership development.

Then, of course, there are best practices training.  Yet best practices are seductive mirages because leaders don't really need best practice which, by their nature, are embedded in the process of solving yesterday's problems.  Leaders need emerging practices, next practices, to deal with current and future challenges.

So there seems to be an underlying flaw in the assumption that all these program represent leadership development.

One way of getting at this is to revisit The Leadership Challenge by James Kouzes and Barry Posner.  They surveyed workers in organizations and asked what attributes they admired most in their leaders.  They came up with 20 in the following rank order.

• Honest
• Forward looking
• Inspiring
• Competent
• Fair minded
• Supportive
• Broad minded
• Intelligent
• Straightforward
• Dependable
• Courageous
• Cooperative
• Imaginative
• Caring
• Determined
• Mature
• Ambitious
• Loyal
• Self controlled
• Independent

Only ONE of these attributes is related to competence.  All the others with perhaps the exception of intelligence are related to character.  And those are the very attributes that elude all of the previously referenced training/leadership development programs.  Can you really train someone to be honest, forward looking and inspiring?  How about fair minded, supportive, broad minded, courageous, caring?

That's the funny little secret.  There's a mismatch between current development offerings and the actual qualities most admired in leaders.  The truth is that leaders are developed through experience, reflection, dialogue, mentoring, coaching.  They are developed primarily through the evolution and deepening of character, not the focus on competence or technique.  Leaders are ultimately developed not simply through what is common but through what is distinctive.  And by amplifying their unique voices.

So if you really want to learn about leadership development it might be worth observing, listening to and reflecting on Eduoard Manet and Georges Braque, two great French painters.  After all, their competence to wield a brush and mix paints is secondary to what really distinguished them.

So here's the interesting thing.

You can train lots of people on the exact same technical skills and get entirely different results.  Because you cannot wring out the uniqueness in folks.  No matter how much you try to train them on common practices they also give voice to what is distinctive.  It is the uniqueness that imprints texture and richness on a thing.  This is true of business and it is true in painting.  It is true of aspiring leaders and still lifes.

Look at these two still lifes.  Two artists, equally competent technically, but creating very different paintings.

Manet, Still Life, Lilacs and Roses

Braque, Still Life with Jugs and Pipe

Georges Braque claimed that you can explain everything about painting except the part that really matters.  It is in the moments of truth when a deeper knowing emerges from the sometimes fiery combination of experience, reflection and learning that great leaders and great artists emerge.

Or as Manet put it:  "Paint the truth; let them talk."

And so with leadership.

The tailor's daughter
Check out this new poetry blog.  Really good stuff! CLICK HERE.

Live Smart After 50!  The Experts' Guide to Life Planning for Uncertain Times

Jane Pauley, Emmy award winning journalist and TV host says "Who do you want to become now and how will you make it happen?  Read Live Smart After 50!  You may discover your answers."

This is a terrific book filled with practical and wise advice and insights.

To learn more or order a copy, click here.

Welcome Granddaughter Hannah Rose
January 7, 2013.  6 pounds, 6 ounces.  Very delicious!
Congrats to daughter Becky and son-in-law Doug!