Leadership is a Team Sport

There’s this concept known as the Peter Principle, where leaders are promoted beyond their competency and have to “fake it till they make it.”

As it turns out, this is a very common phenomenon.

It happens at every level of leadership.

It would be unwise for a leader to pretend they know everything and that all decision-making has to come unilaterally through them. No one knows everything and it’s bad form to appear as such.

The better approach is to empower your people to be leaders themselves. Rely on their experiences and expertise. This is a much better approach that will lead to better morale, performance, and outcomes.

Leadership is a team sport.

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What Does Leadership Look Like?

What does art look like?
What does love look like?

Like resume writing, leadership is both an art and a science.

I heard a colleague years ago remark that they did not see the merit in studying business and leadership. There is tremendous utility is studying both. Every organization has a business concept within it. Organizations, businesses, and people need leaders.

Leadership is a something that if I asked 1,000 people to tell me one word they associate with leadership, I’d get a large variety of words, with a few themes emerging.

When I ask students a word they associate with leadership, they say: strong, honest, powerful, integrity, empathy, and dozen of other traits.

When I ask you what does leadership look like, who is the first person that comes to mind? Why that person? What makes them a leader?

Malala Yousafzai