It’s time to lead

Several years ago, I attended a halfday program on leadership.

The sponsoring organization brought in a national leadership “guru.” The event was sold out and attendees filled with anticipation of what thoughts the presenter would share relative to leading-edge leadership theory and practice.

The program started out fine, but as the morning progressed, I found myself becoming disengaged with the presentation. The presenter was losing my attention rather quickly.

Very theoretical with lots of impressive words, his presentation lacked the backing of realworld experience and as it turned out, this expert had never lead anything except a college classroom lecture.

Needing to reload on coffee, I exited the conference center of about 500 people, refreshed my beverage and made two phone calls. When I returned, I was amazed at what was displayed on the screens. It was an incredibly complicated array of lines, boxes, arrows, circles and words, evidently representing the presenter’s concept of how to lead.

As I looked around the room, I was amazed to see attendees hurriedly writing everything down, attempting to capture the essence of the presenter’s leadership model.

The whole experience appeared to be a classic example of taking a simple topic and making it complicated. I could only imagine the difficulties any of the attendees would have attempting to explain this leadership model to their CEO when they returned from the conference.

Leadership principles are not sophisticated, complicated or hard to understand. Take for instance the movie Wizard of Oz. The four main characters Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Lion and Tin Man teach us that vision, courage, brains and heart are what it really takes to be a great leader.

You see, leaders do the following:

• They dream, have vision and are passionate.

• They are willing to take risks and stand up for what they believe (courage).

• They are sensitive and have the empathy necessary to relate to employees (having heart).

• They possess the knowledge and skills necessary to get the job done and make good decisions (brains).

No graphs, circles arrows or fancy words. Just four, real human qualities embodied in each of us that should be put to good use. The Wizard knew it, and Dorothy figured it out — real leadership is in each of us at all times. We just need to eliminate the obstacles in our heads, apply the four principles of vison, courage, heart and intelligence and lead by example.

Pie-in-the-sky thinking? Not really. There is an ever-growing population of Northeast Ohio organizations that support and expect leadership from their employees. These are the organizations that are growing quickly and have a reputation as great workplaces.

They get it and compete rather effectively locally, nationally and in some cases globally.

True leadership is not as complicated as some would want you to think. So, throw all the fancy diagrams and verbiage out. Leadership requires action, setting an example and less talk.

Consider using the courage, heart, brains and vision already inside of you at work and at home.

This is a unique time right now, where everyone is being asked to modify their life. We have a tremendous opportunity for all of us to lead and work together toward a common goal. If we all lead by example, this period of time and the challenges it presents will be a distant memory sooner than later.

We all will get back to what we consider a “normal” way of life. The key is hard work, sacrifice and most of all realizing that each of us can indeed be a leader.