The insightful path to good leadership
'at the rising of the day'
Aranda Bushland Track
Aranda, ACT
If you look up ‘learning to be a good leader’ in Google Scholar, you will come back with over 6 million pages.
Suffice it to say, there is ample research out there on how you can learn to be a good leader. And there are also many different approaches.
While I mainly work with Senior Executives in the Australian Public Service, I am also working in the space between the public service and the political service, and specifically in leadership across sectors.
In my life long study of leadership and leadership development, the approach that seems to me to be the most appropriate for these times is Servant Leadership. Servant leaders enter into leadership because of their natural desire to serve. This is what drives them, as opposed to those leaders who lead in order to gain power, or acquire gain. While these are two extremes, servant leaders have a drive that more for the common good than their own. And I firmly believe that this drive can be grown.
In my late teens I read a book written by Robert K. Greenleaf, titled ‘Servant Leadership: A journey into the nature of legitimate power & greatness’. It was instrumental in my desire to help leaders in their quest to help those they serve. Greenleaf said:
“The best test...is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived? ”
If you look around at your leadership ‘heroes’, do they meet this test?
Did their work as a leader have a conscious element of helping those they led (served) to become healthier? Wiser? Freer? More autonomous? More likely themselves to lead?
Were the lives of the most disaffected at least not further deprived, if not improved by your leadership hero?
There is a modern equivalent to Greenleaf’s servant leadership test here in Australia, and that the McKinnon Prize. It is an independent, non-partisan award for outstanding political leadership. A large part of the McKinnon Prize goal is to help others recognise what is good political leadership, with the hope that this inspires aspiring leaders to connect with their own values, and put themselves forward as leaders into the future.
The criteria upon which a McKinnon Prize is awarded is as follows:
Visionary: The nominee has demonstrated innovative, farsighted, and practical thinking to identify and resolve important public policy problems.
Collaborative: The nominee has built coalitions to achieve positive outcomes across and beyond partisan divides.
Ethical: The nominee has exhibited honesty, integrity, respect and compassion through a standard of conduct and behaviour that inspires public confidence.
Courageous: The nominee has shown bravery to stand up for a worthy principle for the greater good, overcoming formidable opposition or sectional interests, regardless of risks to their own career advancement.
Impact: The nominee has demonstrably advanced the public good.
Regardless of your political affiliation, the behaviours described in the above criteria are ones in which I think every leader should aspire, regardless if they are in the political world, private industry, not-for-profit, or the public sector.
And best of all, there are activities that will help you to develop your skills in each of these areas.
My studies have been on finding the ‘upstream’ skills, the key to unlocking a leader’s ability to develop these, and other important skills which are required to survive and thrive in their service to a greater good.
If you are interested in hearing more about how you can learn the skills for insightful leadership, why not reach out today? I’d love to share what I’ve found with you!
