Leadership is a State, Not a Status🔗

When we become responsible for others, we no longer are focused on us. We move towards serving other people. Serving other people is leadership. Pandering to one’s own needs without a care about others is absence of leadership.

There are so many books these days about leadership and how it is an important part of making an organization successful. There are so many so-called leadership gurus who teach and train people in organizations to ‘develop’ leadership. Yet when we look at all organizations, whether they are doing business to make a profit, or in government service or in the area of social services, true leaders are rare.

If you look at any organization you will find that less than 1% tends to become the so-called leaders in the organization. If you look at business organizations, we can say that there are probably only 1% of these organizations that can claim to be true leaders in their fields who are excelling in all areas of their business – making a profit, delivering good products and services, providing service to society, providing satisfaction to their employees, etc.

So we can say, true leaders are actually 1% of the 1% of successful business organizations. It means just 0.01% of the overall working population actually has true leadership qualities in them! We can say the same about organizations in other fields. This is what I mean when I say true leaders are rare.

Let us now try and understand why this is the case. For this, we need to understand:

1. What is Leadership?

2. Can leaders be ‘created’ or do you have to be a born leader?

3. What are the key ingredients that make a successful leader?

4. Why do some individuals effortlessly and ‘naturally’ lead and most others struggle?

5. How do we start the process of our individual journey to become leaders? Let us now understand step by step all these points.