I share your self assessment in that I too know far less than my peers and customers.

The most important thing that I have learned about leadership is that if one wants to become a great leader you first have to be a great follower.

MiamiDavid, I love that sentence. It gives me a new goal. The way I have said it previously: there are two types of leaders -- those who try to recruit people stronger than they are, and those who are threatened by strength (and doomed). I am in the first group, but your nuance is very helpful.

Hi MiamiDavid. Thanks for joining!

I agree with your thought that as a leader you don't just walk in front or lead and everyone else is behind you.

I have a quotation from the book Leader as Coach that I think fits in here well:

The purpose of leadership is to create more leaders, not more followers.

Makes sense, eh? We hope to become better leaders so that people don't "need" to follow so much. They can do more on their own.

I encourage managers who are afraid to develop their teams, in case team members move on to different roles (wow, I'll be honest: that's selfish and doesn't help the department, team, business grow), that they should be very proud when a team member moves into a different role because that manager helped make it possible: he/she created the environment for growth--for leaders.

I'm glad I found you. Three years ago I started a case management department for a local home care agency. We have grown from 0 clients to 185. I now have six case managers working for me.

I have always said a good manager works as hard for the people on the team as for the boss. It's taken awhile to find a good team, but I am very proud of them. They said the other day I was a manager/mom. They have the option to work from their homes, but are now pushing to work in the office with me.

We are looking for our own offices.

I am looking forward to this group immensely!

miamidavid,

Yours is an insight closely akin to servant-leadership, the core belief of Robert Greenleaf. Greenleaf, the man who coined the phrase, described servant-leadership in this way:

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”

[Taken from the Servant As Leader published by Robert Greenleaf in 1970.]

For me his thinking is as fresh and startling today as it must have seemed forty years ago.

I write and moderate on a business forum and blog, I have trained people at tertiary level, leaders and managers, trainers and innovators...

I love the whole leadership thing, my keys for it are flexibility and focus... and of course you have to LOVE people!

Thanks for the intro - It's an accident but I found the group area before I found this area. That only matters because I posted there where I should have begun here.

I feel right at home here with people that have led leadership learning events and lots of insight into the subject. I be exposed to smart people telling of their experiences getting smart people to do wonderful work.

I will jump in from time to time with my views on authentic leadership and how it is always demonstrated in the context give and take.

I have to admit that I don't relate managing to leadership to strongly. In fact I see leadership as a form of Art. Strong leadership learns how to use the science of management not the other way around. May some one can demonstrate otherwise, I'll believe it maybe.