What is Leadership?  Simply put, leadership is ablity to motivate a group of people toward a common goal.  One measurement of leadership is influence.

Management and leadership are different.  Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Below please find an introduction to the concious act and mallable skill set of leadership.

LEADERSHIP AS ART

To take a great photograph, you have to see the photograph before you take it.  You have to be able to frame the images to achieve the final product.  If you’re taking a photograph of a person, you have to communicate your vision to that person to turn your vision into reality.  To take an average photograph, you hold your camera and push the button.  No vision, no framing and no communication.  You just push the button and hope you got the picture.

A great leader does the same things required to take a great photograph…they see where you want to go, frame that vision and communicate that vision to their team.  A not-so-great leader follows the steps to take a snapshot…they see something ‘out there’ but they never really capture what’s in their head nor can they frame it and communicate their vision to their teams.

What type of leader are you?  Do you take photographs…or snapshots?

Leadership is based on experience and continuously developing skills.  Please explore the resources below and grow through your Governorship.

LEARNING HOW TO LEAD
While a given person can be born with leadership capabilities, every person aspiring to be a leader needs proper training and tools.  Leadeship training is fundemental to organizational and personal success.

Many resources exsist.  Below are a few samples:

Harvard Business Publishing
FranklinCovey
MindTools
Articles on Leadership

ROLE MODELS

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.
- Walter J. Lippmann

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.
- Eric Hoffer

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
- George Patton

An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
- Stephen R. Covey

There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only pretending, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.
- Liu Shao-ch'i

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their jobs done.
- Peter Drucker

Remember that it is far better to follow well than to lead indifferently.
- John G. Vance

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters.
- Albert Einstein

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Albert Einstein

Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.
- Peter Drucker

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you.
- Max DePree

A friend of mine characterizes leaders simply like this: "Leaders don't inflict pain. They bear pain."
- Max DePree

In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
- Margaret Wheatly

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
- Karen Kaiser Clark

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.
- David Loyd George 

To lead people, walk beside them ...
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
The next best, the people honor and praise.
The next, the people fear;
and the next, the people hate ...
When the best leader's work is done the people say,
"We did it ourselves!"
- Lao-tsu 

LEADERSHIP STYLES

 The three major styles of leadership are (U.S. Army Handbook, 1973):

• Authoritarian or autocratic
• Participative or democratic
• Delegative or free reign

Although good leaders use all three styles, with one of them normally dominant, bad leaders tend to stick with one style.

As the leader, you must work through understanding where you should be on this continuum at all times.  For more information, please click here.

Quiz: What's your leadership style?

UNDERSTANDING YOURSELF AND YOUR ENVIROMENT

Abilities

Abilities or competencies are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that the individuals presently have that allow them to perform their jobs. The capabilities that the organization chooses are initially determined through the selection process.

The model above was developed to explain the underlying elements of effective performance.  The end product is known as a "capability model" (or skill model) that frames performance as the capabilities (skills and knowledge) that make effective performance possible.

Rather than lumping together the work/tasks/goals that a given performer should be able to do, this model helps you to lay the parts out in a manageable framework in order to gain an understanding of what exactly makes an effective performer.

The model has three components: Individual Attributes, Competencies, and Outcomes, which feed into each other [1]:

Individual Attributes (be) --> Competencies (know) --> Outcomes (do)

Individual Attributes

The Individual Attributes are composed of four attributes:

• General Cognitive Ability -- This can be thought of as intelligence, which is linked to biology, rather than experience [2]. While the Army conducts general entrance exams to measure the intelligence levels of new recruits, the civilian world generally relies on other means, such as the applicant's educational grade level to make a very rough guess on his or her intelligence [3].
• Crystallized Cognitive Ability -- This is the intellectual ability that is learned or acquired over time. In most adults, this cognitive ability continuously grows and does not normally fall unless some sort of mental disease or illness sets in. It is composed of the ideas and mental abilities that we learn through experience.
• Motivation -- This is the performer's willingness to tackle problems, exert their influence, and advance the overall human good and value of the organization.
• Personality -- These are any characteristics (traits?) that help the performers to cope with complex organizational situations.

Competencies

Competencies [4] are the heart of the model. There are four major catagories:

• Problem-Solving Skills -- These are the performers' creative abilities to solve unusual and normally ill-defined organizational problems.
• Social Judgement Skills -- This is the capacity to understand people and social systems. They enable the performers to work with each other.
• Knowledge - This is the accumulation of information and the mental structures used to organize that information (schema). Knowledge results from developing an assortment of complex schemata for learning and organizing data (knowledge structure).
• Professional Skills and Knowledge -- These are the knowledge and skills that are critical for producing key outputs.

Performer Outcome

This refers to the degree that the person has successfully performed his or her duties. It is measured by standard external criteria.

Implementing the framework

This framework will probably not fit your organization perfectly, but a little bit of tweaking should give you a basic roadmap to follow as you map competency.  When you think through this model, do not get hung up with identifying basic tasks, rather than competencies (unless of course this is one of your goals).  A task is normally identified with a particular job, duty, or project; while a competency is a knowledge structure and/or related skill sets that will guide a person throughout a chosen career path.

If you understand someone's competency, you will understand their role better.  If you are assessing yourself, you understand your development needs better and what you need to focus on to improve in your role.

NOTES

1. Adapted from Northouse, Peter, (2004). Leadership Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications.

2. The first attribute, General Cognitive Ability, is the only one that normally remains consistently stable over a person's life time. However, it can be compensated for by the second attribute, Crystallized Cognitive Ability.

3. The majority of organizations will have no real means to distinguish between General Cognitive Ability and Crystallized Cognitive Ability since they normally only use very rough measures to get some idea of a persons intelligence level (and even these do not normally come close). Thus you might want to combine the two together for you project. But no matter which way you decide to go, this does gives you a place to put a person's "diploma" or other general cognitive abilities if your mapping project decides that they are needed.

4. One of the reasons that attributes are kept separate from competencies, is that competencies are normally trained as they can be used immediately upon the learner returning to the job, while attributes normally fall under development in that while they help the learner to grow, they normally take longer to make a positive impact on the organization.

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