The reason I wrote the post, “SageRock Is In A Great Position,” is because I wanted to give a little background at to why I want to discuss Leadership Training.
As SageRock grows, leadership development is going to become an increasingly important part of my job. I have to say, I’m extremely excited about this prospect. I truly enjoy teaching and my favorite topic these days is business strategy. So, together, this will be very cool.
I feel like I’m a good leader. But I also feel that my leadership principles come naturally. That’s not to say I haven’t learned a lot about leadership. I am amazed at how much I don’t know. What what does come naturally is that I have a desire to be a good leader.
I think it’s the Good part that makes all the difference. People that want to lead and can lead are everywhere. But people that want to lead well… I think that is more rare.
It’s important, though, to clarify The Good, in this case. The Good I’m referring to is very specific.
The core focus of Good leadership to me is all about the concern, respect and empathy of the team you lead. Everything else is secondary. Money, customers… everything. It goes directly back to the SageRock Core Value.
I want to discuss why I feel this not only makes for a great place to work but also makes exceptional business sense. But that’s for another post.
My concern here is: How to you train: concern, respect and empathy?
How many people do you know that legitimately feel concern, respect and particularly empathy with anyone? They are not American traits, by nature. I certainly fail at it, and it’s my obsession.
As a leader at SageRock, those 3 traits must be continually at the forefront of your mind. You are a servant to your team.
My feeling is, that if a person wants to be a leader at SageRock (and really, who isn’t a leader here?) this can be learned and instilled. If a person doesn’t believe in these principles they shouldn’t be a leader and really probably shouldn’t be on the team.
So, this all leads me to what I’m thinking might be called, The 10 Commandments.
And that’s the next post.
Comments
4 responses to “Leadership Training”
Hey Sage-
I love the topic of leadership theory so here’s my thoughts…
I think you can’t learn leadership from a book. You can study the styles and techniques of great leaders but the application of those principles has to come naturally. Leadership by it’s very nature is not a set of rules. It’s the ability to adapt yourself and guide those around you in an ever-changing environment. It’s more of a lifestyle then a position.
Real leaders don’t want to be leaders; they lead because it’s what is neccessary. People can grow into being a leader because they have to, either for themselves or for the good of others, not because they read a book. To boil leadership down to a base set of rules demeans the whole role to little more then a machine applying a set of rules to a given situation.
I agree that concern, respect and empathy are great qualities, but can those really be taught? Those seem more like inate parts of a person rather then a skill. You said yourself, “If a person doesn?t believe in these principles they shouldn?t be a leader and really probably shouldn?t be on the team.” Even you seem to unconsiously know that these are inate.
I like your point that you have to lead for The Good. I think that’s very true. Leaders can be selfish or selfless. I think more and more we’re seeing the selfish ones (just turn on C-Span, you’ll see a bunch of them). We as a company are looking for the good leaders and they really won’t need to be taught; they’ll just need guidance from the rest of our team of leaders to hone and apply those skills.
Hi Joe,
Those are excellent points.
I agree with all of them. These, in particular, are really important points from your comments:
I think we have to keep all of this in mind as we are hiring people. We are looking for people that have these traits naturally. Then the rest will be easy.
The person, at their core, must be a certain kind of person. But then I think you would agree that they would need shaped to understand how to apply those core characteristics in the form of good leadership.
Wouldn’t you say there are techniques and implementations that need to be learned? Even the most empathetic person might not know how to best apply that to a leadership role.
Let me know what you think.
I think we’re starting to talk about two very different things: Leadership and Management. Leadership is natural, management is man-made. I don’t think you can teach leadership, but you can definitely teach management. Leaders or followers could easily fall into the classification of manager. But the two don?t necessarily go hand-in-hand.
This, to me, sounds like you want to teach leaders how to be managers which is awesome. I mean, look at Peter B. Lewis.
Peter B. Lewis is a natural leader; he’s always trying to do what’s right, not just for his company but for the community he lives in. He definitely falls into the management category too, but because of his natural great leadership stills, he has become a standout manager who has earned respect from his employees and his peers in the business world.
I couldn’t agree more with this. I’ve got to get a subscription to the Harvard Business Review. You would have loved the article on Management Innovation.
It basically said that no one is doing this well. Innovative management as a learned and trained system within a company is pretty much unheard of.
I think we are capable of creating highly innovative managers.