Leadership

I was interviewed yesterday.  The conversation went really well with lots of interesting questions back and forth about my thoughts and experience in relationship building, energizing and motivating teams, delivering results and the like.

Then someone asked me the simplest question of the session and I didnt have a quick answer.  In part because I had too many answers to the question: “How do you define leadership?”

I thought about this for awhile afterwards: in addition to the many possible answers to the question, I came to the conclusion that part of my inability to articulate in words how I define leadership is because leadership is evident in the moment it is delivered, it does not necessarily lend itself to a simple verbal characterization.

Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about pornography back in 1964: I don’t know if I can define it but I know it when I see it.

When his engines stopped and he knew his plane was going down, did Captain Chesley Sullenberger (pilot of the US Airways jet that went down in the Hudson with no loss of life) think: “Wow, I really need to demonstrate leadership right now.  All these people are counting on me.”?

Of course not.  He did what needed to be done to save the lives of his passengers.  That’s what leaders do: Whatever needs to be done to complete the mission.

Be courageous, empathetic, persistent, fair, selfless, conscientious, enthusiastic, generous, impartial, decisive, visionary, joyful, adaptable, knowledgeable, and stable.

That is how I define leadership.

Go ahead, ask me that question again….