The Role Model Leader
Leadership is all around you.
One of the world’s most well recognised modern-day leaders passed away last week, Queen Elizabeth II.
Her reign as Queen was not perfect. Like many leaders in business, she inherited from her predecessors a deeply flawed history, her team often behaved terribly and she fought to manage the balance between her public and private life and image. She too got many things wrong.
She also got many things right. And it is the qualities with which she led which have been the most widely acknowledged this week as the tributes flow.
Her indomitable strength of character, her selflessness, her humility, her ability to put people at ease and lack of ego, and her sense of calm and service are just a few of the leadership qualities that were revered worldwide. By world leaders and the public alike.
In conversation with clients, I often ask them about their role models, mentors and people who lead in the way they want. Many names come up.
Yet for citizens of Great Britain, The Queen was such a part of our lives that the qualities and way that she led was almost taken for granted and overlooked.
Leadership is all around you.
Look for it and learn from it.
There is much to learn.
Observe: Take this opportunity to look around you. Look at those closest to you; your spouse, partner, friends, and family.
What qualities do you admire in them that make them the person that they are?
What qualities do they exhibit that enables them to lead their life in the way they do?
What can you learn from them in doing so?
Expand: Think about those in the public eye or the wider business world.
What are the qualities that you specifically admire in them? Why?
What do you notice when you look at their journey to get to where they are now?
Who are their role models?
Target: Think about a skill you want to learn or hone to make a step change in your leadership.
Who have you observed that does this well?
What specifically do they do? What drives them to do it in this way?
What action can you commit to experimenting with, to make it your own?
Last Weeks Issue: The Work-Life Balance Myth
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