Photo by schoschie

 The act and practice of leadership is a risky undertaking. Leadership is the act or bringing about positive change. This requires leaders to initiate, to blaze new trails, to venture into the unknown and unexplored terrain. All of this entails risk. Kouzes and Posner in their bestselling book, “The Leadership Challenge” describes it this way:

“Leaders are pioneers – people who are willing to step out into the unknown. They are people who are willing to take risks, to innovate and experiment in order to find new an better ways of doing things.”

Leaders take these risk because they have a vision, they see a future and a new world that inspires action and makes the risk worthwhile. Leaders are pioneers… not settlers. Great leaders take risk. They push past the edge of their current reality. Striving to bring their vision into today. How about you?

• Are you a pioneer or a settler?
• Are you taking the necessary risks to find better ways of doing things?

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Photo by Hitchster

One of the greatest leadership myths I come across is that people believe leadership is an inborn gift or trait possessed by a lucky few. In the post “Leadership Ability—You Either Have It or You Don’t” by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay discusses the following limitations that people place on themselves by believing this myth:

• It prevents those who exercise leadership from being the best they could be.
• It prevents many other people from even trying to fulfill their leadership potential.

The reality, as pointed out in the post, is that “leadership is about skills and attitudes and behaviors, all of which can be learned.” So why then do we a shortage of leaders in our organisations and society at large? Christina makes the following observation in answer to this question….

“Leadership and purpose go hand in hand. Leadership entails risk—that’s why we don’t see more of it. So a critical first step in becoming better at leadership is to clarify your purpose. What are you willing to take risks on behalf of?

Maybe you’ve decided that sacrificing short-term success is necessary for reaching longer-term goals…… Whatever your purpose, you have to define it clearly before you’ll be able to take risks to make it a reality and before you’ll be able to help others to do the same.”

I think she has hit the mark, we don’t see more leadership because people are afraid to take the risks involved in striving for their vision and purpose.

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