The Ultimate Skill

 

Business schools teach students the ‘best practices’ across several disciplines.  The expectation is that upon graduation, individuals will have developed broadly based skills that will help them to excel in their future roles.

Thus we have graduates who have earned impressive capabilities in things like strategic planning; financial analysis; developing diversity in human resources; operational excellence; product development and marketing; public relations and so much more. To be sure, these are impressive and important skill sets and can serve both the individual and their employer well.

However, too often these skills never achieve their full impact because there is one key element lacking.  Consider it like trying to bake a cake without that one ingredient that makes all the other ingredients connect.

That skill is leadership!

Great strategic plans fail when they are not well implemented by staff.

A financial analysis is meaningless unless people are committed to maintaining or improving those results.

A diverse and well trained and paid group is like a bunch of musicians. Unless the orchestra is led by a skilled maestro they just make a lot of noise.

Too often those in positions of responsibility - Managers, Presidents and CEO’s -  spend much of their time in the planning and monitoring of results.  They may have the best products, the best ideas, the financial where-with-all, but all is for nought if the execution fails due to inadequate leadership.

Leadership is the art and science of someone with authentic responsibility, authority and accountability gaining the support of their team to accomplish a clear and concise goal or objective.  It is that simple to define but much more difficult to achieve.

Are you spending the time and resources, and setting the right example, to develop leaders in your company?  Leadership is much less about competencies and much more about character.  Unless or until you have come to that knowledge your best efforts at instilling skill sets will always fail to achieve the levels of success that you hope for.

Learn first to lead! Everything thereafter will flow with much greater ease and success.