How Do You Become One Of The Most Outstanding Leaders Ever? Post 1 of the Leading TODAY! series on Being A Billion Dollar Leader

Being a Billion Dollar Leader: Introduction

Leadership!

Since time immemorial people of all races, creeds and social standing have followed the call of great leaders.

Nations have risen from nothing or have been conquered; seas have been sailed in voyages of discovery into the unknown, or for trade; people have given their lives or been given life; ideas have been acted on and history made—all at the behest of a great leader. King Richard I, Queen Victoria, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, “Weary” Dunlop, Sir Arvi Parbo all names synonymous with strong, positive leadership.

Conversely, acts of cruelty, deception, war, death, destruction, atrocity, famine and murder have been carried out by people following a leader who has led them on the wrong path. One only needs to recall the names of Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Jim Jones of the Jonestown mass suicide infamy to see that the charismatic qualities of a great leader can be used for ignoble purposes.

Many books, thousands of words, have been written in order to describe the illusive characteristics that make a leader great.

Yet somehow, when it comes to leadership in the workplace we seem to have missed the point of what makes a great leader great. So often the qualities that make a leader even mediocre seem lacking in business and the community in general.

Why, with all this information available to us, is that so?

I believe that in the corporate world we have simply confused the principles of managing people with the principles and the qualities of great leadership!

For years we have been conned into believing that good management skills equaled good leadership. The truth is that good management skills makes you a good manager!

For nearly 20 years I have been asked to conduct “leadership” training for national and international companies both here and overseas. And, like every other trainer or executive development specialist that I know, I conducted “leadership” development programmes on such topics as effective communication, effective feedback and appraisal systems, personal effectiveness, staff recognition and development programmes, change management, project management, staff selection and interviewing, quality customer service management, image and presentation skills and so on.

And, until recently, I like those many others, believed that what we were doing was developing the leadership skills of their management team.

But now I know I was wrong.

What I have learned is that you can have excellent time management skills and not be a leader.

You can have great communication, feedback and interpersonal skills and still not be a great leader.

You can have fantastic change management, goal setting, reward and recognition and delegation skills and still only be a great manager and not a great leader.

True, a great leader displays all of those capabilities in varying degrees. But leadership, truly great leadership, is more about the heart, the character of a person and not just the dry, but important, skills that are defined as leadership.

Don’t confuse being a manager with being a leader. There is a difference. You can be one and not necessarily be the other.

Now some managers will disagree with that statement. I have often had some interesting comments made to me when I dared declare that a manager does not a leader make.

But ask any worker in the workplace and they will surely tell you that they know of a manager who is definitely not a good leader. (You may even find that they will define someone as a great leader who does not necessarily display great management skills).

So, in the age old question, are leaders born or developed? Well the answer is – both. There are some truly gifted individuals who are born leaders. The rest of us, including myself, are left with the struggle to grow beyond being just good managers into leaders.

These Ten Lessons in Being a Billion Dollar Leader will take you to the heart of strong, ethical leadership.

All Success

Colin

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