Leadership Development Assumptions about Leadership Leadership is about providing a strong situational response to changing realities and is therefore essentially an improvisational art. The need for leadership springs from the one constant reality that the world around us changes all the time. Changing times and circumstances require different responses to the realities. Leadership is about envisioning the changes in the society and the environment around us. It is about creating value through the realization of this vision. People with a clarified and cultivated vision of the future can affect change - detecting and understanding the need for change before it becomes common place reality.
Change requires refashioning behavior and prevalent attitudes and invariably evokes significant resistance from society in general. Leadership, therefore, is about confronting this resistance to change and facilitating the acceptance of new possibilities. At its core, leadership is the sacred pursuit of a learned vision to affect change in a world full of challenges. And because accepting challenges and confronting them requires a realistic assessment of success and one's ability to influence change, leaders are those who constantly reevaluate their capabilities to affect change and accept the possibility of failure and sacrifice.
True leaders therefore are committed to affecting change to realize their vision of reality and are willing to accept failure. Leaders do this because the reality they seek is focused on the greater good of society and because of their abiding commitment to improving the quality of life around them. They are influenced by the notion of possibility thinking rather than probability thinking. Leaders have a strong desire to realize the proposed changes and they demonstrate a level of commitment that goes beyond a typical assessment of the probability of success. Leaders accept a higher level of risk and the dangers associated with failure.
Leadership by its very nature is a societal pursuit. It essentially has two dimensions personal and public leadership. Personal leadership stems from one's desire to measure up to and prepare for the challenges of the envisioned changes. Public leadership is a response to affecting those changes by engaging the society in a deliberate process of transitioning from the existing to new realities.
Here are five basic assumptions about leadership that guide my thought...
From : JP bharathi
12th Jan ' 09
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