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Leadership is not a license to do less. It is a responsibility to do more!

Simon Sinek

Today’s thoughts of inspiration center around leadership, its perception, responsibility and ownership. It is rather amazing how loosely leadership is thrown around in the corporate world. I do remember my early working days in a large company where I aspired to be a leader.

Given my naivety at the first job and early stages of career – I thought leadership/ being a project manager just meant that we didn’t have much to do and went around talking to people.

Well, it was probably the first dose of reality to know how much further form the truth my belief was. But, it was all a very good realization because it made me think about something very important.

Responsibility of a Leader! – Is it about doing less?

But let’s roll back to what’s the overall responsibility of being a leader. Obviously just like everything else – there are good leaders and bad ones. I suppose the distinction is between their thought processes and the commitment to these.

Key responsibilities of a Leader:

• Thinking beyond the job description
• Looking at the big picture
• Provide clarity and direction for the team and organisation

Startwithwhy, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The natural definitions of a good leader are:

• Being responsible for the team, making sure they have a supportive environment to work in which is safe and there are adequate opportunities
• Being protective – after all freedom is nothing if it is not freedom to make mistakes. I may use it loosely but the leader ought to allow room for the team to be adventurous. If you want innovation to thrive, it cannot do so without opportunity.
• Be clear and decisive about the business priorities – know where some deadlines, approaches can be inventive and convey that clarity to the team
• Take ownership of business priorities and know that you have a team to help.

With the above, I just scratch the surface of the key responsibilities of a good leader. But I do recognize that leadership is not a license to do less. In other words – the thought of life being easy if you are a leader, is very easily a naive one which needs to be replaced.

Owning Leadership: It is always about doing more

With any corporate or professional sector, it is all about owning the role. Whether you start as a junior employee in the organization or the CEO, there is a common trend – ownership. There is nothing to say that you cannot lead from the simplest roles.

Leadership is not about the role, it is the way a job is done:

• What lies beyond the job description?
• Are there things that you can improve for the business?
• Incremental Changes Vs Radical

With any organization, there are numerous things to tie together and make them work. You can start taking jobs in your stream – think about the big picture. How does this impact the business. Is there something you can do to make it better?

Remember, the changes need not be monumental each time. They are about small incremental changes which can improve the quality of environment for people working with you or the overall business.

You may think that your area of influence is very small. If that is the case, talk to your manager – what more can you do? It is an open question which can open many doors for you and even create some additional opportunities.

Overworking as a Leader!

I do agree – leadership is a responsibility to do more. But that doesn’t mean that you start overworking and compromising the quality of your personal life. That’s got to be a strict no no. If you are doing that, you are easily running towards an impending burn out which is not good for anyone.

You will need to maintain and protect that creative side of yours. In one of the previous posts, I did talk about the negative impacts of a workaholic leader on a business. It is highly important to be mindful of the influence we are creating for people around us.

There is a popular notion that if you put in long hours, then you are considered to be committed and doing more work for the company. Trust me, that’s an archaic view of a company and a business. If you are in an organization which thinks like that, I would suggest running away at the first opportunity

As a leader you are expected to create results and make it enjoyable to work. If you are not doing that as a prerogative, then it is rather an abuse of that position.

Leadership is not a license to do Less

I did start this article with this premise and will end with the same. As you can clearly see with the number of things we talked above, Leadership is certainly not a license to do less. The number of things keep piling up.

Yes, you might not be able to maintain time sheets for the work you do and they might not always be extremely specific. But the results you are responsible for do have a way of showing up. Your team recognizes you and so does the business.

If your view is about constantly adding value to make a difference, then I might go about and say – you’ve already got a damn good start at leadership. With that I leave you with this beautiful quote from Simon Sinek

Leadership is not a license to do less. It is a responsibility to do more