Leadership is a dance. We need to learn the steps.
1. Spend Time Getting Comfortable with Yourself.
Our leadership is a product of how we know ourselves.
We can study masterful technique from great teachers, but we dance our own leadership steps. Our knowledge about leadership needs to be demonstrated in how we dance.
We cannot lead other people effectively until we have begun to lead ourselves first.
2. Ask More Questions.
We enjoy feeling we have learned the right answers. We push ourselves to rely on what we think we already know. We want to have a handle on being competent, effective leaders.
Our leadership, like our dancing, becomes stronger as we learn. We move, making mistakes, getting advice from other dancers. Our innovative ideas more often come from asking than from telling other people what to do.
3. Listen More Than You Talk.
Great dancers are great listeners. They listen to the music, to the people with whom they are dancing, to other dancers. Great dancers also listen to themselves, to the voice inside their own dancing.
Leadership depends on practice. We need to learn the steps, and how to work with other people. We still need to listen to the music inspiring our leadership.
We may be jazz leaders, or ballroom, or hip-hop. We need to listen, and continue listening, to hear our own leadership music. We need to listen well enough to know when we can improvise.
4. Share Your True Self.
Dancing is more than learning the steps and listening to music. We interpret what we have learned and what we have heard, turning sound into movements.
We include ourselves in the leadership we share with other people.
Are you comfortable with yourself to become a strong leader?
What is the music inspiring your leadership?
[Image by AK Rockefeller]
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