Leadership Is Messy: Five Ways to Address the Mess

The training profession excels at order. After all, its function is to provide clear principles and tools for people to learn the skills they need to succeed in their jobs. Trainers explain best practices, list the steps to achieve them and lead practice exercises. This approach has succeeded since education was born, and it undoubtedly will continue. It works well for learning skills and tools but less so in leadership development. While there are many trainable leadership skills and tools in such core leadership competencies as strategic thinking, political alignment, smart communication and talent motivation, they do not, by themselves, produce effective leadership. Leadership requires something that lies outside of the orderly world of tools and skills. That something is wrestling with the messiness of the leadership life, where much is unknown and uncontrollable. Succeeding requires taking behavioral risks to create and implement ideas. The Messiness of Leadership Leadership is not like any other job. In fact, you can’t really call it a job. <a href="https://trainingindustry.com/articles/leadership/the-risky-business-of-leadership-four-mileposts-on-the-road-to-building-a-leadership-mindset/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Leadership is a mindset</a> with which leaders generate new ideas to lift their organization into the future and then convince others to go along with them. It’s a messy business, with the messiness coming from three primary places: Idea-seeking The fate of a new idea is untested and, hence, unknown. It could turn out to be great, mediocre or awful. To address an issue standing between a problematic status quo and future success, leaders have to travel into an uncomfortable, unknown territory with no signposts pointing toward the destination. To find it, leaders have to ask for directions. <a href="https://medium.com/@juliebenezet/leadership-is-messy-five-ways-to-address-the-mess-c523145db1b0">Read More</a>