18 Feb What Is Leadership?
How Do You Define Leadership?
Christopher Hart here from sunny Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and today we’re talking leadership. And so I’ve gone ahead and made a decision that we’re going to start doing a series of live videos where we’re going to be talking about the topic of leadership. And so I thought it over and I asked myself you know really where should we start with this, and where I believe that we should start is understanding what leadership is. So the first video we’re doing is going to talk about what exactly is leadership, we’re going to define it, we’re going to see how it really plays out into people’s lives, their businesses, their relationships, church organizations, et cetera. Then what my plan is, we’re going to talk about the model of leadership that I teach and I coach to which is the five levels of leadership.
Now some of you may have read John Maxwell’s book, Five Levels of Leadership, and it has nothing to do with that, so I just want to be clear about that. Kind of my own model that I coach to and educate to, so if you read the book, that’s great, it’s a great book but I kind of have my own five models. So stay tuned if you’re interested in learning more about leadership. So let’s dive into it.
What Is Leadership?
What exactly is leadership? Leadership comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes, dimensions, colors, et cetera. You know every guru out there has their own definition of it. My definition is leadership is influence, I think it’s even John Maxwell that says that “leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less.” So I agree with John there, I agree with John on a lot of things. And so to understand what is influence is to understand the definition of influence.
To define influence is to say that influence is the power to affect one’s character or actions. So look at that state, or look at the definition, “the power.” But you actually have power over people, we all possess a power, and that power is to influence other people, and inside that influence is having the ability to affect someone’s character or actions. So when we talk leadership and we talk leadership is influence, if you believe in the fact that leadership is influence then what you’ll come to understand is that influence is affecting someone’s character and actions. Sometimes we affect people’s actions, sometimes we affect people’s character, I believe the highest …or the high levels of leadership is that we can actually affect people’s character and actions.
So how do we do that? That all breathes well, we get definitions, we read books, oh well, oh well. How do we actually do it?
How do we do it? We do it through our actions and our words. I think this is important to understand because there’s a lot of leaders that show up in various different environments where they just try and have influence, the power to affect people’s character or actions, through their own actions. We call those achievers. Achievers can go out there, they can do, they can achieve, and through that they say “Follow me”. And people will follow them, they’ll follow what they do, they’ll follow their model, they’ll follow whatever it is that they’ve done in order to achieve what they’ve accomplished. But there’s something missing in that, and that is the ability to influence people through their words.
So the words part is the conversations that we have with people. And what you’ll see too is there’s a lot of leaders out there that can actually have the power to affect someone’s character or actions through their words, absence of action. And what does that look like? Those are people that can just get on stage, they’re the quote/unquote “motivational speakers,” they like to teach in offices or teach from a stage; and then you look behind them and there’s very little action behind them. And that’s not to say that every leader has to have a high level of achievement, the ‘do’ element in order to connect to the word… the conversation piece, but I do believe that there does need to be some aspect of achievement to back up the words. You can’t just get on stage, or you can just read a bunch of books, go to a bunch of seminars, listen to all the great people, spin it in your little flavor per se, get on stage and then tell people what to do when you yourself don’t have the ability or don’t have the track record to do so.
So I believe that leadership, when we talk about influence and how it has the power to affect people’s character and actions, comes in the way of action and conversation, it’s when those two worlds come together, it’s your ability to go out and do and achieve at a high level so people will follow you, and when they start to you’re able to have the conversations to help them get to where they want to go. Because that’s another definition of leadership is helping people get what they want when they want it, and if you can do it yourself and other people can’t follow you and you can’t influence their actions, you’re not a leader, you’re just a doer that people are following around and you’re the only one getting results. So understand that in that you’re going to have to create some element of conversation to understand what is it they want, when do they want it? Help them create a plan and then there’s elements of accountability, there needs to be systematic accountability along the way and that accountability is all about conversation and how you have the conversation.
So that’s kind of our leadership definition in a broad perspective. My intention is to talk to you all about my five levels of leadership and how that plays out and how the definition that we just defined starts to play out through the different levels of leadership so that we can grow to be great leaders to where we can have the power to influence people’s character and actions in any environment.
Understand This About Leadership
So I want people to understand about leadership is it’s not just in your business, it’s not just in your business, it’s not just in the workforce or the career environment. It’s in yourself, it’s in your own homes, it’s in your church organizations, it’s in your circles of influence, in your community group, small groups, families, your marriages, your parental elements of your life, how do you influence your children. And what you’ll find what influence is not or what leadership is not is telling people what to do. Listen, anyone can do that, go out, get married, tell your wife or your spouse what to do, that’s not leadership. Have a bunch of kids, tell them what to do, they’ll listen because you’re dad, you’re mom and they’re kid. Eventually they’re going to grow into their own person and they’re going to walk away from you and you’re going to wonder why; because your leadership level was low and you just operated in tell-them-what-to-do, and that’s fine to a certain age, but that’s low-level leadership.
So our goal is to teach you how to influence or how to have the power to affect people’s character to make them good people and their actions to help them get what they want when they want it through your actions and the conversations that you’re going to have with them. So thanks for joining me today. Love to hear what your “ah ha’s” were in the comments.
Remember one thing, God loves you and so do I. Have a great day.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Chris@TransformingLivesCoaching.com
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